Science and Research Committee on June 20th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

You have a bit more than a minute.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I'll turn to Mr. Hinton.

Your comment in response to a question you got was about how researchers who are working with problematic foreign actors—Chinese companies like Huawei—have their ability to speak and do research somehow constrained by those agreements. Wouldn't you say that this happens whenever a researcher gets funding from any commercial interest, whether it's an oil company or a chemical company or whatever? That constrains, almost automatically, what that researcher does, the questions they ask, and what they say about the results of their research. They'll basically be self-censoring their own research.

Wouldn't you say that's a broader problem, perhaps, than these security issues we're dealing with?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Give a very brief response, because that was over a minute.

[Jim Hinton]

Yes, it is a broader problem. It is also a specific problem. Making sure that Canadian universities and researchers are working for the net benefit of the country is very important, as well as the specific issues when the technologies can be used in harmful ways.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

That's great.

Thank you, both. Thank you for coming on short notice, as Mr. Leuprecht mentioned, and thank you for providing the testimonies you've given us for this study. If you have more information that you can submit in writing, that would be great.

I will just outline where we are in the committee, because the bells are ringing. We have 17 minutes. We have to get our other witnesses in, which will be at about 25 minutes after 12 o'clock. That will give us about 40 minutes of their time, to keep the studies balanced.

We then have a motion. We have to do the budget. We have to go in camera, which is also going to take some conversion time, to do the drafting instructions.

I think that, at this point, we'll suspend until after the votes.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

On a point of order, Chair, we have 15 minutes right now. We're filibustering so that we don't get more answers from the witnesses here today—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

I don't think it's a filibuster.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

We have 16 minutes. What are we going to do from now until the vote, then?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Do we have unanimous consent to do another round of questions?

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Well, this one was scheduled for 45 minutes. It's exactly 45 minutes.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

We started late, though.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

I would suggest that we get the witnesses ready for the second round so that we don't waste that one as well. We'd have to stop five minutes before the bells anyway.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Yes. I think we will suspend.

I'm not trying to avoid the witnesses—if you can get us anything else in writing, please do—but by the time we did another round, we would be over the time for voting. We also have other business to do.

I will suspend until after the votes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

I am hoping Mr. Blanchette-Joncas will join us.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(i) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, December 5, 2022, the committee commences its study of the long-term impacts of pay gaps experienced by different genders and equity-seeking groups among faculty at Canadian universities.

It's now my pleasure to welcome, as an individual, Alexa D’Addario, Ph.D. student. Joining us online from the University of Ottawa, we have Ivy Bourgeault, research chair in gender, diversity, and the professions.

You will each have five minutes to give us your opening comments, starting with Ms. D’Addario.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Chair, I'm sorry to interrupt.

Do we not have to wait 10 minutes after a vote? I don't know where Maxime is, but if he went to the House to vote, we're supposed to allow 10 minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Okay, thanks.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I'm sorry. I don't know where he is, but I've been caught like this other times.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Mr. Cannings is right. There is generally a 10-minute wait. When I gavelled in, I thought I had everybody in the room, but I mistook one of our staff assistants for Mr. Blanchette-Joncas. I saw only the back of his head. Hopefully, he can join us.

There he is.

We'll go to Ms. D'Addario for a five-minute presentation, please.

Thank you for joining us.

[Alexa D’Addario, Ph.D. Student, As an Individual]

Thank you so much.

Good afternoon, honourable Chair, honourable Vice-Chair, and members of the committee.

I want to thank you for having me as a witness to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research as part of a panel in view of the long-term impacts of pay gaps experienced by different genders and equity-seeking groups among faculty at Canadian universities.

I have been in post-secondary education at a number of Canadian universities since 2010, with only very brief periods of no enrolment. Shortly after beginning my studies, I became aware of pay gaps experienced by different genders and equity-seeking groups among faculty at Canadian universities.

Since beginning my studies, it has become a popular discussion point regarding gender equality in Canada, with many people having strong feelings one way or another. Indeed, it is a complex topic, with many different factors influencing the outcome, and everyone will have a different idea of why such discrepancies manifest, or conversely, don’t.

Both the United Nations and the Government of Canada recognize gender equality as sustainable development goal 5. Indeed, according to the Government of Canada website:

gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world. This SDG addresses the reality that, despite progress, gender inequality persists. Women and girls often face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, additionally compounded due to factors based on....

Then it lists race, ethnicity, geography, income, education, religion, language, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, and migrant or refugee status. The United Nations Development Programme website states, “Ending all discrimination against women and girls is not only a basic human right, it’s crucial for sustainable future; it’s proven that empowering women and girls helps economic growth and development.”

There has been extensive research on this topic in just Canada alone.

Marcie Penner is an associate professor of psychology at King’s University College, affiliated with Western University, and Tracy Smith-Carrier is an associate professor and Canada research chair, tier 2, in advancing the UN sustainable development goals at Royal Roads University. Both Smith-Carrier and Penner were part of a study in 2021 quantifying the gender wage gap as well as pension gaps in Canadian post-secondary institutions and the impact over the course of a career and retirement. It was published in the Canadian Journal of Higher Education.

Using King's University College as a case study, the findings of the study revealed the presence of a gender wage and pension gap. Female employees earned lower wages compared to their male counterparts, even when factors like job positions and qualifications were considered. Additionally, female employees received fewer pension contributions, resulting in a gender disparity in retirement benefits.

In a subsequent article for University Affairs, Penner and Smith-Carrier wrote, “The gender pay gap for faculty in Canadian universities is significant and persistent. Women professors earn on average 10 per cent (or $10,500 per year) less than men for the same work.” They cited both the Canadian Association of University Teachers' 2018 equity report and Statistics Canada’s “Number and salaries of full-time teaching staff at Canadian universities”.

According to the authors, these gaps are compounded in indigenous, racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ faculty. Race was not a variable provided in available Statistics Canada data, and pay equity legislation did not address wage gaps faced by indigenous, racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ faculty.

However, according to the authors:

Data from the Canadian Association of University Teachers shows racialized professors experience a 10 per cent pay gap relative to their non-racialized peers. Racialized women professors, in particular, experience greater pay inequity.

Given that the gender pay gap for racialized women professors is double that of their non-racialized women counterparts, it follows that racialized women professors face larger lifetime salary and pension gaps than our calculation for women professors overall.

The study highlights that the gender wage gap is not solely a matter of unequal pay for equal work but is influenced by broader factors, such as occupational segregation and differences in job positions and opportunities. It also points to the importance of considering pension benefits as part of the overall gender gap in compensation.

The results of the study appear to be echoed in every other study that I looked at. According to a study by Karen E. A. Burns et al. published in PLOS Medicine in 2019, “Gender disparity existed overall in grant and personnel award success rates, especially for grants directed to selected research communities.” Over a 15-year period, the findings of the study revealed significant gender differences in funding rates based on research content areas. Female researchers faced lower success rates compared to their male counterparts in certain content areas. These disparities were not explained only by factors such as career stage or research productivity, indicating the presence of gender bias in the grant and personnel award funding process.

The study highlights the need for addressing gender disparities in research funding within specific content areas. It underscores the importance of creating a more equitable and inclusive funding environment that provides equal opportunities for researchers of all genders, regardless of their chosen research field of study.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Okay, thank you. We're at five minutes.

It goes quickly, I know. However, you can submit anything in writing or you could make that part of the answers to questions.

Now we'll turn to Ms. Bourgeault from the University of Ottawa, for five minutes.

[Dr. Ivy Lynn Bourgeault, Research Chair in Gender, Diversity and the Professions, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair and members, for the invitation to speak on this issue of critical importance.

My name, as you know, is Ivy Bourgeault. I'm speaking to you as the University of Ottawa research chair in gender, diversity and the professions.

I have been in academia uninterrupted since 1985 as a student and since 1998 as a faculty member. I have written on gender inequity in academia in national and international journals, and I have provided testimony on gender-based pay gaps to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal in the case of health professions where women predominate.

Let me state plainly that there exists a gender pay gap among Canadian faculty. This is a fact both within and across faculty. Data shows that the gap is widening among all faculty ranks. A 2019 article by Momani and colleagues measures gender pay gaps in the Ontario public post-secondary education sector from 1996 to 2016 using the public sector salary disclosure data, so that's everybody who earns over $100,000. They found gaps widening among all faculty ranks. Men were paid on average 2.14% and 5.26% more than women faculty for all university teaching staff and deans, respectively. Keep in mind that these are only data covering those above $100,000. These trends are muted in that case.

Using a robust methodology that tries to tease apart the different factors that are independently related to compensation, the majority of the gap can be attributed to factors that can be “explained”. This includes rank, department, years at rank and whether someone is a research chair. It is important to stress that these independent factors are in and of themselves influenced by gender and other forms of inequity. For example, if you are a woman, it takes longer to be promoted into higher ranks. This is something that we call “the sticky floor hypothesis”. Fewer women are observed in higher-paid disciplines, schools or faculties. Finally, there is robust research to show that women are less likely to hold prestigious research chair positions.

Other reasons to explain this gap include what is called a “pipeline issue”. This argues that women have not yet reached the ranks of academia in sufficient proportion for the gender pay gap to lessen. Momani and colleagues' analysis refutes this: “women's years of experience in academia do not mitigate the observed pay gaps.”

Labour productivity is another argument, which says that a woman's lack of progression could be justified if she is less productive or less experienced than her colleagues. As you know, productivity in academia is measured by research grants and publications. Less attention is paid to teaching, supervision and service work. Women are more likely to be assigned to more onerous academic service work, what we call “academic housework”, and women are also likely to supervise women students looking for same-gender mentors, who are more likely to take leave during their studies for parental reasons, which affects their productivity as students as well as that of their supervisors.

We also have to take into consideration the impact of the pandemic. It has become clear that the pandemic holds important implications for gender inequality in a variety of realms, including academia. “He's Working from Home and I'm at Home Trying to Work” is an apt descriptor that Martucci and others used to describe how women faculty were more likely to take on child care activities during lockdown, significantly affecting their productivity, especially in terms of publication and research grants, which are the key reasons for promotion and tenure.

Another descriptor is the disappearing research agendas of mother scholars in academia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Being more likely to teach, women faculty spent more time in the shift to online teaching even before the pandemic, but also, during the pandemic, women faculty were more likely to be approached by students with mental health concerns, which compounded during the pandemic and added significantly to their emotional labours. These impacts have legacy effects.

What about the other forms of inequity? This is much more challenging because we lack data in the Canadian context. Where data does exist, it points to greater inequities for Black women, indigenous women and women of colour in academia, especially around the emotional care labour, around inequities that rose up in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and the discovery of over 10,000 graves around residential schools.

Moreover, compensation should be seen as more than just salary. It can take a variety of forms, such as release time, research funding, size of office, time to tenure and promotion, and workloads. There is very little systemic data collected on these factors, all of which are inequitably distributed along gender and other lines. Pay gap studies typically take a narrow view of compensation, with a focus on salary differentials, and even those with that narrow focus often do not reflect on the long-term implication in terms of pensions, and that is significant and compounded every single year.

I hope that I've made the case for how action is needed now and action of a structural nature. This is not about fixing women and diverse genders and faculty of diverse background. Baker and colleagues this year made a case for pay transparency. Promotion transparency is another facilitator, and I'm happy to speak to other factors.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much.

We're going to start off with Mr. Soroka.

I understand you're sharing some time with Mr. Tochor, as well.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Tochor will start.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses. We'll have some questions for you here shortly from my colleagues.

I want to comment on this study and every study that this committee has looked at since this committee was established. It comes down to lack of money and control. For the most part, that is every study. In this study, it's about how we can close the gap, and it's going to take money. What we had here today, earlier in committee, was an hour allotted to look at the Beijing influence at our universities, and it was cut short. This study was started late because apparently the Liberals do not want to study this or find answers to Beijing's influence in our institutions. We are talking about billions of taxpayers' dollars that are getting funnelled into research and IP that leaves the country and goes to Beijing. That is the control they have of our IP. Those dollars that we waste on this research could be addressing all of the different issues that we've studied at this committee.

For us to drag our feet because there are some in the Liberal Party who do not want to hear the answers to these questions is a travesty. Over the summer, we will be asking the opposition parties to hopefully support that this study continue throughout the summer because these answers impact everything that this committee does. I believe what we will find is that there is a pattern of looking the other way with dollars leaving our country, which will make Canadians weaker and Beijing stronger because of a misuse of taxpayers' dollars at our institutions to support Beijing's interests.

With that, I will turn the floor over to Gerald to carry on with this study, but I do look forward to a summer of meetings at the science committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

You have about four minutes left. Thank you.