Science and Research Committee on Sept. 20th, 2023

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for coming today.

I will start my first question with Dr. Penner and Ms. Smith-Carrier.

There are a lot of statistics out there and sometimes.... I hate to use the term “manipulate”, but I've looked online and there are a few universities that are saying, “Once you start comparing apples to apples, actually our pay equity is very close, so it's not changing that much.” But given the information you've provided, I think you've delved into it a lot better. There's a lot more information and it's a lot more accurate.

Did you find that there were differences between the provinces? Were certain provinces more equitably representative, meaning that they pay equally, or were they all just about the same?

[Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier]

I'm not sure if Dr. Penner wants to weigh in, but the case study that we used was of one specific institution in Ontario, Canada. We didn't do our modelling across universities. We took that data from other sources.

[Marcie Penner]

I will add to Dr. Smith-Carrier's remarks that data does exist by institution. The range I gave was based on Canadian institutions. I haven't seen that broken down by province, but it's certainly something that could be done with the existing data.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

If you have that information or if you could find that, we'd very much appreciate if you could supply it for us later.

Each university or institution is supposed to have guidelines to make sure that it isn't being discriminatory or to make sure that it is paying equally and fairly right across the board. Did you find with your study that the guidelines are there? If the guidelines are there, are they being followed or not?

[Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier]

The guidelines, I think, are there, but it's the interpretation of those. When an administrator sits down to look at somebody's CV and determine how many years of experience they are coming in with, that is where that sort of subjective bias comes in. It's not that the salary floors don't exist or that the guidelines don't exist; it's the interpretation as to when that bias gets introduced in terms of those salary negotiations.

[Marcie Penner]

Also, for the Pay Equity Act in Ontario, because “professor” is termed a male profession, there is no obligation for universities to ensure that female faculty are paid the same as male instructors.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I find it quite surprising that universities are saying that they're here to treat everyone equally and fairly and that there shouldn't be any differences, while you have proven exactly the opposite. Do you have any reason or rationale as to why they would be doing this? As you say, they interpret the information however they want to.

[Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier]

It stems from that implicit or unconscious bias that people have against women. That's pervasive across society and is certainly witnessed in academia. When we look at the data, when someone looks at the name on somebody's CV, a woman's experience is automatically undervalued compared to a man's.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I find that quite shocking, because I've always treated everyone the same, and to me it didn't matter if you were a man or a woman. In whatever role I was or whatever job I was doing, I tried to pay both exactly the same so there weren't any issues for me. That's why I find it quite appalling that a university promotes that and yet doesn't stand behind what it's saying. Anyway, I'll leave my little rant.

I'll go to Ms. Al-khooly. You mentioned that even after correcting for other factors, it still seems that racialized professors seem to be paid substantially less than white professors. Do you believe this to be purely discriminatory, or are there other factors that are causing this pay gap?

[Dina Al-khooly]

Thank you for the question.

As the other witnesses have mentioned, there are outward ways in which people can be discriminated against and implicit ways that are a part of how we move in our everyday lives and we don't even appreciate the ways in which we're marginalizing folks. For example, if in the conversations we have with a peer they have more similar lived experience to ours, then we might have a higher affinity with that person. We're more cordial with that person. When a promotional opportunity comes up, we're more likely to think of that person because we have that relationship with them.

It all comes down to discrimination, whether that's coming from bad intent or whether that is just kind of the natural way in which we move through the world. There are instances of both, of course. Part of this is not coming from a place of “Oh, I want to make sure that women and racialized professors are not advancing”, but if I'm more comfortable around certain people and those are the types of people I've been around my whole life, I'm going to, just given the nature of how I move in the world, alienate folks who are dissimilar to me.

It comes a lot from the leadership of the organization and how often those marginalized voices are actually given the power to make these decisions. If they're not, the people with the power are going to continue to reproduce these inequities just by the nature of how they move in the world.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you for the questions. The time goes quickly.

We'll go over to Ms. Bradford for six minutes.

Thank you for suggesting this study. I look forward to your questions.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all three of our witnesses for joining us today. You are our first witnesses in this very important study.

While pay equity falls mostly under provincial jurisdiction, the federal government has a number of programs that address pay equity. Can you tell the committee more about how these programs support provincial laws?

I think we'll start with Professors Smith-Carrier and Penner on this.

[Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier]

There is the federal equity legislation. However, that pertains to federally regulated employees, so it's only to a set group of employees and not broadly across the board. If that legislation was expanded to include employees of other sectors and jurisdictions, including academia, that would be helpful.

As Dr. Penner noted earlier, the division of jobs based on classes that are male-oriented or female-oriented, in my mind, actually perpetuates some of this issue. “Which ones are the male-dominated fields and which are the female ones?” assumes that males should be in those fields and women should be in other fields.

While there are some provisions there, I think they're somewhat limited and could certainly be either expanded or reconceptualized to better address equity needs.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

I want to turn now to the impacts, the short- and long-term consequences of this wage gap for research in Canada. We know it exists and we know it's unfair, but what is the impact that it's having on our research capability?

[Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier]

First of all, women are less likely to get funding. That's an issue, as we noted earlier. They have to produce two and a half times as much output in the number of publications relative to men to be considered as competent. That is obviously affecting their ability to get funding.

Dr. Penner, would you like to weigh in on that?

[Marcie Penner]

Yes. The amount of funding and the duration of the funding.... They're less likely to have papers published or accepted for conferences.

Women bring a different perspective, as do indigenous faculty and racialized faculty. They bring a different perspective and address research questions using different methodologies, as well, that are lost. If we are in search of the truth, we're missing some of that answer.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Al-khooly, diversity within the Canadian research community is of great benefit to the research coming out of Canada. What impact does the discrepancy in pay have, not just on the ability to have a diverse research community, but also taking into consideration access to research positions and the quality and quantity of research being produced in Canada?

What are your thoughts on that?

[Dina Al-khooly]

Thank you for the question.

Adding on to where they started, Black women, specifically, have the worst maternal health outcomes out of all women across Canada. We know there are many issues with AI that have specific racial biases. We know that climate impacts are impacting marginalized communities at a disproportionate rate to other communities.

All of these are implicit results of the fact that we don't have researchers who reflect the diversity of our Canadian population. They're unable to inform this research. They're unable to inform the innovations that are coming out to address our specific community problems, so that has an impact not just on folks within the research community, but across our society.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you.

Again, to you, Ms. Al-khooly, this question builds on a previous study that we've completed in this committee.

How would low stipends for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows impact equity, diversity and inclusion within the research community?

[Dina Al-khooly]

Thank you.

One thing that we've found really pervasive with our youth is a need to make money right away. That's a really big challenge in academia, because you need many years of being paid low wages, surviving on stipends and surviving on very small grants in order to get to the next career level.

They're very turned off by the thought that they have to be in their academic position for 10 years before they start to make a real career that can actually pay them to survive. Many of them are looking for faster ways to enter the workforce so that they can make money to support both themselves and their families.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Professor Penner, now that we know these pay discrepancies exist, can you explain why and what the post-secondary institutions are doing to address it?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

You have about 10 seconds.

[Marcie Penner]

Yes. We've talked about the systematic bias that goes into that decision-making. I do think that most of it is implicit. The salary anomaly studies and those salary corrections are the work that's primarily being done, in addition to reviewing policies and practices around hiring—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you. You did well. I'm sorry to cut you off, but we have to keep moving.

It's over to Maxime Blanchette-Joncas.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses who are with us today.

My questions are for Ms. Penner and Ms. Smith‑Carrier.

I find the study that was done very interesting, but I think there's still a long way to go. There's been an improvement, but there's still a lot to do.

I want to find out exactly who is responsible for the current pay gap between men and women on university teaching staff.