Science and Research Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2023

[Laura Neals]

I don't have those numbers of what they were in 2017. We did do adjustments for 81 female full professors that ranged from $1,500 to $12,000—I think it was a couple of hundred thousand dollars at the time—but then those got rolled into their base salaries and they've been incremented over the years—

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

I have a few more questions. Maybe you could give us some data on that and make it available to the committee.

[Laura Neals]

Sure.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

One of the things that Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier said to this committee was that “men's earnings rise significantly with academic productivity, whereas women's do not.” That's simply not fair.

You say that this is a problem on your campus too. If so, can you expand on what your organization is doing to fix it?

[Laura Neals]

Where you would see this on our campus is when male faculty members are promoted to associate professor or full professor faster than their female colleagues. There's typically a $2,000 pay increase with those promotions. So if female professors are taking longer to reach those promotion milestones, maybe due to things like parental leave, then you would see that gap.

One of the things that have been identified by us as a means to address that is research funding for female professors returning from parental leave, recognizing that time away from the workplace. Sometimes the programs of research stagnate and they need a little bit of an investment to get those going again.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

That leads me to the next question.

We heard there is a problem collecting data; there are barriers to collecting that data. Do you agree?

[Laura Neals]

I guess it depends on the problem. For the pay equity problem, I would say there aren't very many barriers. Most of our faculty members' salaries are published through the provincial Public Sector Compensation Disclosure Act. So that data is readily available, I would argue.

In terms of the impact of individuals potentially taking steps back from their career for parental leave or to address caregiving responsibilities, it's very difficult to collect that data and understand the impact.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Just to expand on that, do you have any mechanisms at Dalhousie to attract that data for the gender pay gaps?

[Laura Neals]

Sure. For gender pay gaps, individuals have self-identified through our institutional census. Then we have their salary information readily available, so that's an easy data analysis exercise.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

How do you track that, and what do you do with that data?

[Laura Neals]

What we do institutionally is that before we enter a new round of collective bargaining, we redo the whole pay equity analysis. That allows us to identify if there are any gaps, not just between our male and female faculty members but also among all equity-deserving groups. We run that analysis typically every three years, using the HR salary data we have and the self-identification.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

What's the role of human resources and those who deal with academic staff relations, like you, in ensuring pay equity at our universities? There was some discussion at this committee a few weeks ago about that. I'm just wondering if you can expand on that. What's the role of your human resources and those, like yourself, who deal with this?

[Laura Neals]

We've taken it on as our responsibility as it's something we need to be looking at for our faculty. It's important to note that at our institution we do this exercise in partnership with our faculty union. We're all reviewing the same data and looking to see if there are issues and what we could do through the collective bargaining process to remedy them.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

One aspect we've struggled with in the study that has been going on here is identifying what's clearly the jurisdiction of the federal government in this matter. I don't want to be overstepping into provincial territories or areas. Other than the Canada research chairs, do you think there is a lot of action that might be outside the scope of the federal government, or are there federal aspects that need to be adjusted that you can build upon in recommendations for us?

[Laura Neals]

What we notice at our institution is that what's typically required for the Canada research chairs eventually flows out to the rest of our faculty members. If we're doing it for one group, we may as well do it for all of them.

Through the federal contractors program and the CRC program, we're asking institutions to do a pay equity analysis and remedy issues, or at least have a plan. Right now, through the federal contractors program, we need to have an equity hiring plan, and institutions are accountable for providing that. I think you could do a very similar thing in terms of a pay equity analysis here, where institutions have to provide a plan.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

My question was whether there is a responsibility for the universities to do that themselves.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you for all the questions. That was a great line of questioning and great answers. If we're missing some details, please do send them over. I think we caught a couple of those.

Now we're going to Mr. Lametti for five minutes.

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have one question, and then I will turn it over to Dr. Jaczek.

Speaking from my perch as a full professor, I have gone through these evaluation processes. I salute my former colleague Kim Brooks for her ascendancy at Dal. She was an outstanding colleague, and she was outstanding to work with. I delight at her success.

In the various exercises we had at McGill—and I salute the exercises you have at both Dalhousie and Guelph—my own anecdotal experience is that what messed up the scale was at the other end. It was recruitment and retention. When we had, for whatever reason, male professors seeking work in other places—in the United States, for example—at much higher salaries, and the university moved to try to retain them, or when we tried to recruit for chairs and that sort of thing, this seemed to skew the salary with respect to men and jacked up their salaries.

Now, does your y-model—or any other model—take that into account, or are there more ad hoc measures that you try to implement in order to redress the kinds of imbalances that the top end of the process will have all the way through the process, particularly with respect to gender but also with respect to other equity-seeking groups?

[Laura Neals]

The y-value is just used when individuals are hired into the university, so it's not helpful in addressing that particular issue. We do have something called the anomalies fund. As faculty members progress through their careers, we do an analysis of faculty salaries—again, faculty by faculty. We create a regression line, and individuals who are below the regression line can submit to the anomalies fund for an adjustment. It's not a perfect mechanism to address the trends and issues you're speaking to, but it is one we do have embedded in our collective agreement.

There are measures along the way where faculty can put their hands up for salary adjustments if they are anomalously low.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

The next questioner is Ms. Jaczek.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Thank you so much.

My question is for Ms. Naidoo-Harris.

Indira, it seems like just yesterday that we were seatmates in the Ontario legislature. It's great to see you. Thank you for all your good work now at the University of Guelph.

We're concentrating here on the issue of what the federal government can do. We've heard about the federal contractors initiative. We've heard about some assistance that has been given in terms of guidance and so on. Are there any other federal government initiatives that could help on the pay equity issue or anything you have seen in your experience at the University of Guelph?

[Indira Naidoo-Harris]

There are a number of areas if the federal government wants to move into things. Something I identified in my work as being a serious challenge when it comes to the biases we are seeing and to improving and minimizing the pay gaps and the equity gaps—and we touched a little bit on it—is how folks will move up through the pipeline.

What we do at the University of Guelph is focus a lot on training and education. I think that is one of the most important ways in which you can change a culture and also ensure that the folks who are working for you, especially the women and those from equity-deserving groups, get a fair chance at roles when their hiring is occurring. There needs to be more focus on education and training.

Universities are doing that, but I would encourage the federal government to perhaps look at ways in which they could encourage that kind of thing.

On another note, the Council of the European Union, for example, recently issued a new directive on gender pay gaps that requires companies to take action if they have a pay gap, let's say, of more than 5%. That's a big step. It is something that my research shows others are doing, and it is something that could be useful. If U.K. companies have more than 250 employees, they are required to report the gender pay gap and report what that is. They've been doing that for a number of years.

There are perhaps other mechanisms that we could bring into place, but my experience is that sometimes it's just a matter of putting in supports to change the culture, and that comes with education and ensuring that when hiring committees are out there.... In my own work, we do training to make people aware that women may not be published as often, and they may not be asked to do as many keynote addresses, and gaps in their CVs do not necessarily mean that they were just unemployed but may be because of child-rearing years, so there needs to be sensitivity around that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

That's super. Thank you very much.

Mr. Blanchette-Joncas, you have two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Chair.

Ms. Neals, in its 2021–2026 strategic plan, Dalhousie University set a goal to enrich and diversify its faculty and staff, including actively seeking out the most accomplished and promising individuals, enhancing best practices in recruitment and retention, and offering competitive conditions that attract candidates.

Can you tell us specifically about the steps the University is taking to improve equity in the representation and compensation of university professors?

[Laura Neals]

I'll just stress that we have the y-value mechanism, which sets the floor, but what is true at Dalhousie and so many other institutions is that when we're hiring folks from equity-deserving groups, it's a wildly competitive market and often we're paying high salaries to compete with other institutions. For those groups, we're seeing higher salaries to attract those talented scholars.