Pay Equity Committee on April 18th, 2016

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

With the little time I have left I'm going to key in on some of the comments that were made in a similar presentation that we heard from earlier. It talked about the inequity with indigenous women. In my riding of Sault Ste. Marie we have a lot of first nations, Métis, etc., and the presentation before said it was 30%, you guys recognized it, and with newcomers, 21%.

What does that look like within the federal system and could you suggest any solutions to this very important problem?

[Debi Daviau]

For us it looks like under-representation of all those groups in the federal sector, under-representation of aboriginals, disabled persons, people of colour. Then obviously there are all those issues exacerbating the whole wage gap for women when women are also in those various groups.

For the most part we have federal rates of pay and if you have people in the same classification they'll be paid the same regardless of their gender or colour, but we see a gross under-representation of those groups in the federal public sector.

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

Is it a recruitment issue then?

[Debi Daviau]

No. I think it's unfair hiring practices, and it goes way beyond the issue of pay equity. It goes to the very structure of government and staffing.

[Robyn Benson]

If I might add, we've just been through a government that has done major downsizing for 10 years within the federal public service, so our members have found that unfortunately equity group members have left the government through no fault of their own. There is a decided under-representation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anita Vandenbeld]

We'll now go to Mr. Kmiec for a four-minute round.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I want to continue where I left off about the classification system because this discussion has made me appreciate people who do classification even more, and I was at the point where I had a lot of time for them.

An outside audit from a private firm was never done, but people who have worked in the private sector, from Hay Group and other places, have come in and done work with the classification system?

[Robyn Benson]

Because I'm at 36 years, and I'm not sure how long Ms. Daviau has been with the government—

[Debi Daviau]

I'm not saying.

[Robyn Benson]

—there have been many attempts at a new classification system. Let me be clear.

There was UJEP. There was UCS. I think there was La Relève, but there have been many attempts. In 2006 the president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada signed a document with Treasury Board that we would undertake classification. Here we are 10 years later and the work is not done. It's been stalled. Staff has not been assigned to it. We've had many difficulties.

I don't want to be disrespectful, but it has become somewhat of a joke among my membership that the government or Treasury Board will never do the classification system because every time they get close and find out it's going to cost them money, they drop that process. It's been attempted many times.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Can I just ask a follow-up? I can see here on page 4 that they have really nice acronyms for them, but in each of those processes was there no private company from the outside looking in? Were those all internally run by Treasury Board?

[Robyn Benson]

I would suggest to you that they were probably all internally run by Treasury Board. The process we have now, Helen....

[Helen Berry]

It's still internal as far as I know. We're not privy to some of the things that they're looking at, so they may well be looking at outside, off-the-shelf plans. We've dealt with the outside plans and consultants with a number of our separate agencies and separate employers.

[Debi Daviau]

What we know is that this government has certainly not been immune to the use of professional services and external providers. You can bet that in an area where they had little or no expertise that they have, of their own volition, in privacy, availed themselves of this expertise, but maybe not as part of a formal process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anita Vandenbeld]

Very good. Thank you.

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

Switching direction, how long did it take Quebec to put its law in place?

[Annick Desjardins]

The act was adopted in 1996. It was put in force in 1997. But there was a chapter at the time that allowed for exemptions, and we contested the constitutionality of that. This took many years to resolve, and in 2004 there was a Superior Court decision declaring the exemption process unconstitutional. This had obviously taken a lot of energy from the pay equity commission. We all started really working on pay equity plans in Quebec after that decision in 2004.

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

What is the wage gap now in Quebec? Do you have any data on it?

[Annick Desjardins]

I don't have up-to-date data. What we know, though, is that when the Quebec government finalized its exercise in 2006, there was a peak in economic growth that was identified by economists. It was actually beneficial to the economy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anita Vandenbeld]

Thank you.

Now we have Mr. DeCourcey for four minutes.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to thank all the witnesses again for their participation today.

I heard loud and clear what your preferences are, what your versions are.

Both my questions will build on some of Terry's questions because listening to the Canadian Human Rights Commission earlier and the discussion about the expertise that's there, I wonder, given the desire to see an independent commission and tribunal set up, whether there is any thought amongst anyone here that perhaps the Canadian commission for human rights does have the expertise or could serve in that role, if that was a recommendation sent to government.

[Robyn Benson]

I'll start, and Helen will finish.

Certainly they do have the expertise, but with all of the tasks at hand, unless there's going to be some assistance to them, I think they're spread far to thin right now.

[Helen Berry]

That's part of the issue. Pay equity is a bit different to some of the other things, as they highlighted in their comments. It requires different kinds of expertise and some technical know-how whereas the other grounds of discrimination are a little more the same. They see the same kind of thing. Even going to the Human Rights Tribunal, pay equity expertise at the tribunal level is somewhat limited.

[Debi Daviau]

I'd just like to add to that. If that were a model to be considered, it's taking anywhere between 10 and 30 years to resolve complaints through that system, although admittedly it's a better complaint-based system than the one being proposed under PSECA. But what we are really proposing is that we move away from a complaint-based system into this more proactive system where we can resolve disputes in some other mechanism other than through a complaint-based system. Maybe any tribunal could be set up to do that, but they aren't today.

[Annick Desjardins]

The Human Rights Commission surely has expertise on systemic discrimination because they also administer the Employment Equity Act. They do have some experience with proactive systems, but obviously we're talking about many more resources that would be needed there.