Pay Equity Committee on April 11th, 2016

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

I can share my time with Terry.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you very much for the opportunity and thank you very much for the presentation. The work you do is very important. My first question is for Justine.

In the presentation this particular slide really jumped out at me, the one about those most affected by the wage gap. As a father to a Métis daughter, aboriginal women earn less than aboriginal men and 31% less than non-aboriginal men. Again, as a husband to a Métis and with a daughter who's Métis, it's very alarming. What are the causes? Can you delve into that for us? What are the stats and the stories about that? Why?

[Justine Akman]

That's a complicated question with a complicated answer.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

It's difficult to answer in two minutes.

[Justine Akman]

If I understand the question properly.... Is it why indigenous women earn significantly less than indigenous men or non-indigenous men, or both?

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

It's both, because the statement on here is that aboriginal women earn less than aboriginal men and 31% less than non-aboriginal men.

[Justine Akman]

It would be related to all of the factors that I stated within the presentation, so part-time work, labour market segmentation, inability to work at all because of lack of supports and education, but also all of the other social issues that affect indigenous communities. The list is very long and I'm not the proper person to go into all of that, but these are all of the issues that are plaguing reserves in Canada today, including lower levels of education, etc.

So why women more than men? It's for all the same reasons other women as well are lower in the wage gap than men. I'm not sure it's as precise, but racism also would play into it. It's not a terribly precise answer to your question but it would be that all of the different social issues have claim to it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anita Vandenbeld]

That's the end of the time for that question.

Ms. Gladu.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you.

Even where there is pay equity legislation to say men and women should be paid the same, it's apparent to me that it doesn't happen. As a chemical engineer for 32 years, I experienced, along with many of the women in engineering that I worked with, less pay than a man within an existing job category and longer times to promotion, even with better job performance ratings.

Some of the fixes that were applied at the various companies involved making a job-class pay range transparent, so that people would know what it was, and then showing with dots the population within the group, divided by men and women. Once that was done, it was transparent to everyone that this was the pay range, and you could see visually whether men or women were paid equitably.

My question for Anthony would be, within the sectors that you know about, what kind of transparency of pay grades is there? Do you feel that there's something to be done there?

[Anthony Giles]

I can only answer partly. I'm not familiar with the non-unionized occupations in those sectors. What I will say is, where there is unionization, all the pay grades are public. They're contained in the collective agreement.

What I don't know is how many unions and companies go through the process you've just described of actually charting out that distribution. What I would also say—although I stand to be corrected—is that pay equity as such doesn't focus on individuals and their salaries; it focuses on job categories. I don't think the kind of distribution you're talking about within a particular job category would be addressed through a pay equity program.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

I'm sharing my time. Do you have a comment?

[Justine Akman]

As we mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, there are different ways of measuring this. But some of what is affecting the wage gap—and whether or not it's within the definition of pay equity, I'm not sure—has to do with hidden ways of compensating men.

If you look at my diagram that talks about how many women are at the very top rates of the management echelon. In the CEO category, a lot of their compensation might come from bonuses and other forms. If you speak to university professors, there might be published salaries for the jobs, but the difference is in the perks with the job. It's the more hidden systems of compensating people that may be affecting some of the wage gap, and that's often linked to their ability to work longer hours or having not had interruptions in their time in the labour force, etc.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you. I'll be sharing my time with Dan.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I want to thank all of our witnesses for their testimony thus far.

I'd like to focus on the presentations from Treasury Board. First of all, in our last meeting, we had an opportunity to discuss the 2004 pay equity report with some of the authors. At the time, I asked a question about the fact that the Public Service Equitable Compensation Act, instead of “pay equity”, refers to “equitable compensation”.

In government, if you define a term, there's usually a reason for it. Can you share some of the rationale for the use of the term “equitable compensation” versus “pay equity” in the legislation?

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I was actually looking into this question today and going through the testimony of the previous officials when PSECA was brought into force. Based on the information that I was able to glean from their appearance at the standing committee, apparently there was a linkage to the word “equitable”. I think the term “equitable remuneration” was used in one of the international conventions. As to why it was switched to “compensation”, I think this was just to create consistency with our usual language in the public service compensation management system.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Ms. Akman, though, was trying to capture where certain benefits or bonuses would not be caught in a structure similar to what Ms. Gladu had mentioned earlier. Is that correct? The idea is to try to capture total compensation in any form at any level in the public service. Is that correct?

[Renée Caron]

Most pay equity systems are looking at compensation that is broadly defined to include wage and non-wage compensation, yes.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

The act was originally brought in.... Legislatively it was enacted by Parliament in 2009 but has yet to come into force.

Are there any expected timelines for that?

[Manon Brassard]

I believe there has to be a government decision as to whether to bring it into force or not.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

There was also some testimony with regard to a question I asked about.... There was a reference by one of the witnesses to collective bargaining. To me, when you read through the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act or PSECA—I think that's the acronym Ms. Caron used—it seems that the government through that legislation has changed our understanding of collective bargaining in some capacity.

In it there's an assessment process whereby an employer and the employees can bring forward issues of pay or compensation and have a process that happens on a regular basis. Again, collective bargaining happens usually every four to five years I would imagine, so it allows for a constant refreshing of the environment in which workers and employers are operating.

To me, that seems to be less collective bargaining and more collective disclosure because there's disclosure to the employees as to the challenges in the workplace as well as there is a discussion and negotiation and ultimately ratification.

So to me, it seems that....

[The Chair, Liberal, Anita Vandenbeld]

Mr. Albas, I'm sorry but you're out of time for the seven minutes, but of course in a future round if you want to revisit it....

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

I'll revisit it another time. I was coming to a question, but thank you, Madam Chair. I respect your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anita Vandenbeld]

We'll now go to the third questioner.

Ms. Benson, you have seven minutes.

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the presentations.

I have a couple of high-level questions I'd like each department to respond to.

We had an opportunity to hear from Beth Bilson, the author of the report on pay equity in 2004 and heard the extensive amount of research and time spent looking at the issue of pay equity in...I guess more than 2004 because I believe it went over several years. They recommended a model of pay equity that was stand-alone legislation. For me, that kind of model is comparable to occupational health and safety, where there's legislation and it would apply to all federally regulated employers, including the public service.

I can start with you, Mr. Giles, and your comment on why we wouldn't go back to that report and build on the work that is already done to be able to move forward. What happened to those recommendations?

The other thing would be just what role.... Three different departments are here today talking about pay equity, and I would be very interested to hear from each of you what role you feel your department or your ministry would play in addressing pay equity. What would be your responsibility on this issue? You can relate it to the report itself or to the work you're doing now.

[Anthony Giles]

I can't speak from personal knowledge of what happened or didn't happen in the wake of the report being published. I know from the record that the government of the day responded by saying that it felt there was not a sufficient consensus among all the stakeholders who would be affected by it to move forward in adopting the recommendations of the report. That's my understanding from reading the historical record.

On your second question about the usefulness of the Bilson report today, I think it is probably one of the most comprehensive looks at the subject ever undertaken in Canada, certainly, and in terms of it being a starting point, I don't think anyone would disagree that it would be a critical place to start to consider what in 2016 would be a good pay equity model. But in regard to the fact that 12 years have passed, I think that from a purely policy development point of view there should be at least some sort of exercise of consulting broadly, of talking to employers and to unions and finding out what they think of this 12 years later. So yes, it's a good starting point, but not the only one.

With respect to responsibilities, as I said in my presentation, the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour is broadly responsible for labour matters in the federal private sector, including crown corporations, and therefore has a role, along with other ministers, in coming to a consensus within government on what policy to go forward with.