Science and Research Committee on Sept. 27th, 2023

[Dr. Chad Gaffield]

No.

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

All right.

I'm going to continue, because this is a very important topic.

Mr. Stoff, you talked about your vision for the Center for Research Security and Integrity during your June 9, 2022, appearance before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. You also spoke of a new paradigm—a new approach to research protection. Can you tell us how this approach differs from the current one? What are the advantages of this approach?

[Jeffrey Stoff]

Yes, I think there is just as great an effort being made by the Canadian government as by other governments. There is a lack of knowledge—subject matter expertise in language—to really build the comprehensive knowledge that's needed, particularly on China. To rely entirely on governments to do this is not going to work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you. If there's more, we can ask for it in writing.

We only have two and a half minutes, and I'm going to go over to Mr. Cannings, if I can.

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

Mr. Chair, I would like us to ask Mr. Stoff to answer my question in writing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Yes, I just said that. Thank you.

Mr. Cannings, it's over to you for two and a half minutes, please.

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

Thank you.

I want to pick up on this issue of trying to balance research freedom and good international partnerships with these necessary restrictions in some situations, and we have this talk of lists.

I want to go to Mr. Landon to ask what the stick is behind these lists. Is it that you won't get funding from the tri-councils if you have these connections? Is there anything that may drive certain researchers away from Canadian funding and directly into the hands of China? Is there also some push-back on universities and their ability to obtain funds from the tri-councils behind that? I wonder what the mechanism would be there.

[Philip Landon]

Our understanding is that, when the restricted entities list—or I think it's the named organization list—and the sensitive research in technology area list merge, federal funding would not be made available to researchers who are applying for that.

I think the details on how current partnerships with those working in those areas would have to wind down are still to be determined, but that's our understanding as to how the lists are going to be applied.

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

Mr. Gaffield, can you comment on that? What your hopes and concerns are with regard to that situation?

[Dr. Chad Gaffield]

As soon as the lists come out, I am convinced that all our universities will, as quickly as possible, take any action that is necessary in terms of respecting those lists.

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

Are you not concerned about any implications that might have for researchers who are then denied funding from Canada and who go elsewhere?

[Dr. Chad Gaffield]

Absolutely. As I said earlier, this is going to put at risk potentially some of our students, who are obviously a key aspect of our projects.

It seems to me that it's in all our interests to maintain and treat as a top priority the fact that research be as open as possible but as secure as necessary. We take this very seriously, and I'm sure all our institutions will do gymnastics to support their students as much as they can, but obviously the federal government has to help as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to all three witnesses today, Mr. Stoff, Mr. Landon and Mr. Gaffield, for your testimony and your answers.

Thank you to the members for your questions.

I know we did have to cut off a few. If there are some additional comments that we could have in writing or any clarifications that you'd like to provide, please send them to the clerk.

We will now briefly suspend to let our witnesses leave and get our second panel of witnesses. We have two witnesses who will be dialing in and getting tested, and then we'll be back in just a few minutes for our second panel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Welcome back. We'll get started with our second panel now that we have our tests completed.

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 our two witnesses who are joining us virtually. First, we have, as an individual, Catherine Beaudry, professor, École Polytechnique de Montréal. We also have, from the Canadian Association of University Teachers, Robin Whitaker, vice-president, who is joining us from Laurier, I understand.

You each have five minutes.

If we could get started with Dr. Beaudry, that would be terrific.

[Dr. Catherine Beaudry, Professor, Polytechnique de Montréal, As an Individual]

Thank you. I'll be making my statement in French.

Thank you for this invitation to appear before the Standing Committee on Science and Research. It is a great privilege for me to have the chance to share with you my research findings on wage inequality.

As a specialist in the management and economics of science, technology and innovation, I quickly became interested in the differences between men and women in science. I wanted to go beyond simple gender average comparisons, which always show women lagging behind men, to understand the factors that influence these gaps. I therefore examined how gender, age, funding, collaboration and position in networks influence scientific output and impact.

My research has shown that, for the same amount of grant funding obtained, women publish more than men. On the other hand, when men and women publish in scholarly journals with the same impact factor, the greater the proportion of women co‑authors, the less likely the article is to be cited. These results prompted me to investigate whether these differences in scientific output had an impact on the career progression and salary of female academics.

Also, as I was treasurer, then vice-president, of the Association des professeurs de l'École Polytechnique, I was also called upon to find ways to reduce the barriers faced by female professors, which slow down their careers and keep salaries below expectations. I'm happy to tell you that there is now retroactive promotion at Polytechnique so as not to penalize women who take maternity leave, for example.

The main part of my talk is about survey results. In 2017, I conducted an extensive pan-Canadian survey of academic salaries and explored all the bonuses and professional fees that are added to base salary and exacerbate gender pay differences in overall compensation. The study looked at market and performance bonuses, bonuses associated with research chairs, and administrative bonuses.

Both Statistics Canada's descriptive statistics and those from my survey show that men earn more than women, and that the gap widens as one progresses in one's career from assistant professor to full professor. There are fewer and fewer women at full professor level.

Survey data show that when it comes to administrative bonuses, men earn $16,000 compared to $9,000 for women. On the market bonus side, men earn $13,000 compared to $7,000 for women. The biggest gap is in professional fees: $25,000 for men and $13,000 for women.

While the gap between men and women at the rank of full professor is $7,000 if we consider just base salary, it rises to over $15,000 if we consider total compensation. So it's when it comes to total compensation that the gap is widest.

We also ran regression models to try and understand the pay gaps we were able to explain and those that might be judged to be a bit of discrimination. We showed that several factors explain the differences in overall compensation, which vary from 4% to 6% depending on the field. On average, it's not that huge.

Age, academic rank, discipline, career breaks, a more research-oriented career, but, above all, the various bonuses and professional fees explain the differences in overall remuneration between men and women. Once all these factors are taken into account, there are very few gender gaps that could be considered as discrimination and are not explained by all the variables we have included in the regression model. Only fees and administrative bonuses fall into this unexplained category.

For all elements of total compensation embedded in a collective bargaining agreement—for universities that have such agreements—such as the base salary associated with different academic ranks and certain bonuses associated with research chairs and performance, gender pay gaps are explicable. We do, however, have difficulty explaining the amount of bonuses.

We're starting to study this.

Since the chair is signalling that my time is up, I thank you. I can answer your questions in both French and English.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

I'm afraid I had to cut you off there, but thank you. Of course, you may be able to work some of what you didn't get to into your answers. If not, you are welcome to provide it in writing. That would be wonderful. Thank you.

Now we go to Dr. Whitaker from the Canadian Association of University Teachers for five minutes.

[Robin Whitaker, Vice-President, Canadian Association of University Teachers]

Thank you, Chair.

I join you from St. John's at Memorial University—not Laurier—on the island portion of Newfoundland and Labrador, which I will begin by acknowledging as the unceded homelands of the Beothuk and Mi'kmaq peoples.

I am vice-president of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which represents over 72,000 teachers, researchers, librarians and general staff at universities, colleges and polytechnics across the country. I'm also a professor at Memorial University, which recently completed a gender pay gap study that identified and compensated women, including me, for salary inequalities.

Thank you to the committee for undertaking this important study. I want to make four main points in my opening remarks, and I'll be glad to elaborate more in the questions and answers.

First, to better understand the diverse and intersecting factors that contribute to pay inequities in universities and colleges, we need more robust demographic and compensation data from institutions for both full-time and contract academic staff. The federal government can offer leadership by supporting the collection of this data through the expansion of Statistics Canada's university and college academic staff system survey, or UCASS, as a start.

Second, thanks to UCASS, we have fairly robust data on the gender pay gap for full-time university professors. The raw pay gap does not account for differences in observable characteristics, but it is a first step in understanding pay differences between subpopulations.

For women professors working full-time in Canadian universities, that raw gap is 10% less on average than their male counterparts. This gap is driven largely by differences of discipline, rank and age. Even after adjusting for these factors, however, we still find a gender pay gap of about 4%, and this remaining gap is most likely explained by the kinds of factors that my colleague mentioned, like starting salaries—which are often negotiated individually—by merit pay and market differential awards, and by differences in time to promotion.

Each of these factors is an opportunity for bias that can result in differential compensation. In short, we need a broader analysis and reform of the salary structure in academia.

In lieu of institutional data on salaries tied to factors beyond binary gender, we have looked at census data for university professors and college instructors. This data should be read with some caution, but we find that the raw pay gap for racialized and indigenous post-secondary teachers is wide, and it's even wider for racialized and indigenous women. It's 10% for racialized university teachers, rising to 25% for racialized women university teachers.

Employment status is a likely factor in the large pay gaps seen in the census data, as equity-deserving group members are most likely under-represented in the highest ranks and in full-time academic work.

Thirdly, universities and colleges need to look at equity hiring in disciplines traditionally dominated by men and at conducting routine pay equity exercises. Academic staff associations have been actively working to bring about these changes in collective agreements. They've also been negotiating contract language around the provision of information and compression of salary scales, and “stop the tenure clock” language to help women accelerate their time to promotion.

My fourth and final point is that the federal government has a key role to play in supporting academic staff associations to eliminate pay discrimination in the academic workforce. It can support the collection of broader demographic data in the UCASS salary survey, including on race, gender identity, disability and indigeneity, and do so for all staff—full-time and part-time.

Doing so will help identify and assess how single, dual or multiple sources of disadvantage combine to affect salaries and other forms of compensation. It can also support efforts to eliminate discrimination through a strengthened federal contractors program, requiring compliance with federal employment equity, pay transparency and pay equity requirements.

Lastly, the federal government can work with the provinces to renew the academic workforce and create more full-time tenured positions. Current labour force survey estimates show that one in three university professors is on part-time or part-year contracts without fair compensation, including access to benefits, pensions, professional development or research funds. The lack of faculty renewal is a structural barrier to achieving employment equity and, therefore, pay equity among academic staff.

Thank you. I look forward to the discussion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

That's great. Thank you.

Now we'll get going with our first round of questions, starting with Corey Tochor for six minutes, please.

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

Thank you so much.

Dr. Beaudry, you talked about how you're not penalizing mat leave. How does that work? What are the nuts and bolts of that?

How do you set up a program so that, when someone takes time off to have a child, it doesn't affect the pay gap?

[Dr. Catherine Beaudry]

I must mention that this is not something that is new in Quebec. Université Laval had this in 1986, so they were the precursors.

What happens is that, when a woman comes back to work after maternity leave, eventually asks for a promotion to the next rank and obtains that rank, the promotion is granted retroactively to compensate for the maternity leave. If she took a one-year maternity leave, she would be granted the promotion at the start of the maternity leave, not at the end of the maternity leave, and she would receive compensation for the year she lost in terms of the salary increase. This is because, when you move from assistant to associate professor, there's an increase in salary.

She would have the retroactive pay of that year she was on maternity leave when she finally applies for the promotion. That's what I mean by retroactive. The maternity leave is not penalized.

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

It was back in 1986 that this was introduced. Was this to fix some of the problems at the time? When it was introduced, was the hope that this would narrow that gap much more than it has been narrowed?

[Dr. Catherine Beaudry]

I presume so. I was quite young in 1986, so I couldn't tell you exactly what was in the mind of the rector of Université Laval at the time. I suspect it was to remove the penalties that women encountered by taking maternity leave.

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

I'm moving on to another aspect. In an article you co-wrote this spring, you established that, on average, women publish 1.8 articles per year, compared with men's 2.6 articles.

What are the numbers in Canada, and how do they stack up to the rest of the world?

[Dr. Catherine Beaudry]

I couldn't tell you about the rest of the world in terms of publications, but if you read any publication by Vincent Larivière, I'm sure you will find that women publish less than men.

I think it's a question of choice. This is something that nobody has really had a look at. Many women will take the decision to not write another paper over the weekend because they want to be driving to ski lessons or swimming lessons. I think the question of choice is something that we don't have on our radar. Everywhere in the world, women publish less than men.

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

I would be interested in that. If you could find that number afterward to include in a written submission, it would be interesting to see how we stack up.

Another area that you've expressed concern about is how Canadian nanotechnology research is very male-dominated. What are other specific research areas in Canada that have the same issues?