Science and Research Committee on Sept. 20th, 2023

[Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier]

I think a lot of universities have been addressing this. This is something that's gone back for quite some time now. Universities started on this road 50 years ago. It's been a long road, and, as you mention, there has been significant progress in closing the gap. It's persistent, though.

As Dr. Penner noted, universities are basically doing this out of goodwill. There isn't legislation suggesting that they must address it, although I think a lot of them would be under a lot of fire now, with equity, diversity, inclusion and decolonization plans in place, to address these issues. I think it's a combination of both faculty associations and administrators who are working on this.

Also, I think it's something that affects sessional faculty as well. That's something we haven't talked about yet. The gap there is even more significant. We know that the non-unionized members or members who are not part of an association have an even harder time. It needs to be even broader to consider those members as well and not just the faculty association members.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you for clarifying that.

Earlier, you mentioned a possible solution, which would be to broaden the scope of the Pay Equity Act, which currently applies only to public servants, that is to federal government employees.

I want to understand your point of view. Personally, this is the first time I've heard of such a solution. I know that various pay equity policies already exist, particularly in Quebec and in other provinces.

Is there a movement or mobilization? Has this recommendation been supported by various provincial government representatives, in particular?

[Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier]

Well, there are a lot of differences in what's going on with pay equity legislation and pay transparency. Some are having pay transparency commissions now and pay equity boards.

I think that, ideally, it would be nice to have it captured across the country. Maybe these things would need to be negotiated. The federal, provincial and territorial governments would need to negotiate these things together. Moving away from some of our job classes might be something that they would want to consider as part of the negotiations.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Okay.

Thank you for that.

I want to understand the other angle of intervention that can also be presented in this regard. As I mentioned, pay equity policies already exist, particularly in universities and government institutions. The way you see it, these policies aren't perfect right now, and that's what is leading to these inequalities, these gender pay gaps.

I'm trying to see what a provincial government or the Government of Quebec couldn't do that the federal government could do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Who is that question for?

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

My question is for Prof. Penner and Prof. Smith‑Carrier.

[Marcie Penner]

I think there's a role for the provinces to play and a potential role for the federal government, as well. There are a number of programs through which universities receive federal funds. As part of the application for those federal funds, asking institutions to provide information about their gender and other diversity pay gaps could be part of that process, in the same way that the federal government has played a role in rectifying what was a human rights complaint around Canada research chairs and gender and other diversity imbalances in those positions. I believe there's a role for both to play.

In some provinces, you can only go through a human rights complaint to address these issues because there is no pay equity legislation.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Okay, thank you.

The federal government currently provides funding to universities, including research chairs and grant programs. Are there any concrete mechanisms to avoid pay inequities between genders?

[Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier]

Absolutely. I think the Canada research chair funding stream is a great example of what can be done. It requires that equity be addressed. It has to be done through a survey of every applicant, and that is the means to determine whether or not it's meeting the benchmarks according to that human rights court case.

We could extend that to all federal funding agencies to ensure that equity is represented through that, and use—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Okay, thank you.

I'm cutting you off, but you can always send in comments in writing to expand on anything at the end of the questions. However, we are pretty tight on time this afternoon.

We'll go now to Mr. Cannings for six minutes.

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

Thank you.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here.

I'm going to start with Ms. Al-khooly. Thank you, especially, for being here. I know I've talked to your group before, Visions of Science. It's a group or organization that attempts to encourage people of colour—women of colour, especially—to get involved in STEM research positions and education.

I'm wondering if we can back up from the pay gap and go to the gap in terms of getting these racialized women into this field. In one of our last studies, we had testimony from Dr. Andrade from the University of Toronto, and she said:

Our current system is a massive filter. It's a filter that is filtering out people as a function of their finances, not as a function of their excellence and not as a function of the likelihood that they might be the next...Nobel Prize laureate. We are filtering out people who can't take the mental load of living in poverty....

She went on very eloquently about those challenges that people have.

I'm wondering if you could maybe take a couple of minutes to talk about what Visions of Science does to encourage people who have those challenges ahead of them to get involved in research.

[Dina Al-khooly]

Thank you so much.

One thing that we try to do with our youth as soon as they hit high school—because as soon as they're of working age, it's an opportunity to lose them from the path of STEM—is to work with our partners to try to bridge internships from as early as grade 10 so that youth don't have to work at a grocery store, for example, as opposed to being part of our STEM program in the summer.

I think there's a really big role to play for work-integrated learning, because these youth have to be paid in order to stay on the trajectory of STEM. As soon as they're of working age, we need to find ways to ensure that they can learn STEM while also being paid. Otherwise, we are going to lose them to entry-level jobs, and regardless of their interest in STEM, by the time they get to post-secondary, other influences will have pushed them out.

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

Thank you.

I'd like to turn quickly to Dr. Smith-Carrier to talk about some of these biases.

I think this is the toughest part. One of the astounding things you mentioned is that a woman has to do two times or two and a half times the amount of research and published work to get the same salary results as a man. That's astounding. We obviously can't do blind...you know, take the name off the top of their CV, because most of the CV is a list of publications with their name.

How do we get around that? Is there a way of doing that with structuring the panels or committees that make these decisions?

[Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier]

Yes, that is one thing that could be done. Certainly you could have a faculty association representative at the negotiations so you would have somebody who is independent and who can also help contribute to the discussion. I think these are things that could be arranged.

In terms of the names on the CVs and whatnot, as you said, it's not an easy thing to consider, but perhaps you could have a resumé or a CV that was wiped clean in terms of names and had just the number of publications or the experience of that person, to de-identify them in a way. That is a possibility, I think.

[Marcie Penner]

In follow-up research, Dr. Smith-Carrier and I...because this question arose for us as well: We've quantified a problem, so how do we resolve it? There's not a lot of good evidence about evidence-based programs and policies to deal with EDI issues. We're currently conducting a systematic review of the existing body of evidence and would be happy to report back our findings, because I think you raise a very important question.

[Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier]

Yes, absolutely.

In fact, some of the diversity training that is offered at the moment, the Harvard Review has come out as saying, is actually not effective, so having evidence-informed policies as well as the terms of our programs and how we go about this, I think, is really important moving forward.

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

Thank you.

I'll leave it there. I'll pick it up on my next round.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much.

For the next round, we're going to have to do a little trimming and have four minutes, four minutes, two minutes and two minutes, to try to land us on time.

We can now go to Corey Tochor for four minutes.

Go ahead, please.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses here today.

Regarding the study that was, I believe, co-written by Professors Penner and Smith-Carrier, I was shocked to hear that there was an almost half-a-million-dollar difference when we added it all up. It is mentioned in that study, though, that Statistics Canada has still not been asking for all of the different kinds of information that you need.

What do you need that Stats Canada has not been asking for?

[Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier]

Well, if we want to expand it beyond just gender, there is also the diversity piece involving equity-denied groups. No institution yet has been doing pay equity for equity-denied groups outside of gender, so having mandatory data collection on that would certainly be a start.

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

At some time in the history of our country, did we record that information?

[Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier]

I think Stats Canada does capture some of it in census data, but you have to pay for all of that. It's not publicly available. One of our recommendations is to collect the data and make it publicly available so that we have it, so that institutions have it, people have it, and we don't have to pay large sums of money to get access to that information.

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

Thank you so much.

I know we're under a bit of a time crunch, so we'll move on to the next member.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you, Mr. Tochor.

Sometimes it's quality over quantity in questions, so thank you.

Now we'll go over to Mr. Turnbull for four minutes.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks to the witnesses for being here. Thanks for your presentations. This is a really important study.

Thanks to my colleague Ms. Bradford for bringing this motion forward to do this important work. It's certainly shocking to hear that in 2023 we still see such a pay equity gap based on gender and racialization.

You started to answer a question previously about what post-secondary institutions are doing to address this. I wonder if Professor Smith-Carrier or Professor Penner could speak to that in a little more detail, because my understanding is.... You mentioned before that post-secondary institutions are studying this and that they're reviewing policies. I think you mentioned only hiring processes, but I think there are probably numerous other points in post-secondary institutions where we could be making a difference, so I'm just wondering if there's additional clarity that you can provide on that.