Pay Equity Committee on May 4th, 2016

[Emanuela Heyninck]

I would hate to call it a model. It's simply a suggestion.

Our experience is that in some of the cases that come before us.... I think you have to appreciate that we don't get a lot of complaints actually. The complaints that we get are probably not indicative of what is going on in the broader public.

Some of the more difficult cases we have that come forward as complaints are situations where there have been a series of collective agreements and then pay equity is brought up at a different time frame. All I'm trying to say is that it makes the investigation more complex if you then have to sort through the potential pay equity impact of various collective agreements. I'm not suggesting a PSECA model.

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

Sure.

[Emanuela Heyninck]

I haven't really looked at that model.

I would not want to comment on it because I really haven't studied it very carefully.

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

The Treasury Board president was here the other day, and I can see how difficult it must be dealing with so many different unions of different sizes and different focuses and whatnot.

[Emanuela Heyninck]

The Ontario public service is very similar.

I mean, they've managed to go through that. I think that over time they have developed processes with their various unions. I must say, we get very few, if any, complaints from the Ontario public service.

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

So sometimes it's just the newness of the model and whatnot.

[Emanuela Heyninck]

I think that like every new model, there's going to be a period of time that will require an adjustment for all parties. You just have to plow through that and learn from the experiences of Ontario and Quebec in getting through that.

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

I have a number of questions, and hopefully we can...because you're one of the few witnesses we've had that is actually in the field dealing with these issues—

[Emanuela Heyninck]

Right.

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

—every day in a substantial way. You have to work with everyone.

First of all, what is your yearly budget?

[Emanuela Heyninck]

Our budget is just shy of $3 million, and our staffing complement is 25.

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

Okay.

How many departments do you have? Obviously, it's very small.

[Emanuela Heyninck]

With 25 people...?

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

Yes.

[Emanuela Heyninck]

We have 15 review officers. We have a program specialist. We have a legal counsel, and we have the complement of admin staff.

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

Do you have one central office?

[Emanuela Heyninck]

Yes.

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

Is it near Queen's Park?

[Emanuela Heyninck]

We operate in downtown Toronto, yes.

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

Ontario is quite geographically large and diverse.

[Emanuela Heyninck]

Yes.

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

How do you deal with that?

[Emanuela Heyninck]

Like I said, most of our activity is now monitoring for compliance. We just decide to monitor. Sometimes we monitor sectorally. Sometimes we monitor by geography. It depends what the focus of our program is and where we think there are pockets of non-compliance.

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

Okay, so how many—

[Emanuela Heyninck]

A lot of this can actually be done on paper.

At the end of the day, what you're really looking at is compensation data and how it's been allocated between male job classes and female job classes. You can do quite a bit of that by email exchanges, by asking for the specific data that you're looking for and then having that data appear. We have some review officers that do field visits. We have other review officers that are quite happy to do all of this work, and manage to do it quite nicely, from their offices.