Science and Research Committee on Oct. 30th, 2023

[Vincent Dale]

Would you mind repeating the first part of your question?

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

We charge researchers to access this information. I want to know whether it covers the cost of the collection of that data.

[Vincent Dale]

No, it does not.

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

We are collecting some of the monies to pay for this data collection. Is half of the cost being offset by researchers?

[Vincent Dale]

I can help you to understanding how our costs work. Maybe I'll begin at the end.

Once we have collected information and it's ready for analysis, tabulation or writing reports, for example, there are different options within Stats Canada to access that data. Typically, a large proportion of the data would be available free and easily through the StatsCan website. There are some more advanced uses of the data that involve additional costs to Stats Canada, and we do recover those costs.

For example, we have what we call research data centres, where a researcher may spend weeks or months doing a more detailed examination of the data for a very in-depth research project. We do recover the cost associated with maintaining that infrastructure. That's quite separate from the cost of collecting the data in the first place.

We don't charge to acquire data. To fully shed light on the situation, that's not to say those who share data with us may incur some cost in sharing that information with us.

I hope that responds to your question, but it's certainly not the case that we charge to receive data.

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

To receive data....

Changing gears a little, in your presentation today you had the 30-year difference between those percentage gaps. Do you have what they were 20 years ago, or 10 years ago, versus today?

[Vincent Dale]

We do. I don't have them at hand. I would be happy to supply that.

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

Could you please supply that as well?

There is data collection in the millions, if not hundreds of thousands, of individuals. When we look at post-secondary institutions and the actual pool of people you would be collecting statistics on, wouldn't it be more efficient for the actual facilities to be able to know what they're paying their individual people versus an outside source trying to collect that?

[Vincent Dale]

That's the way that UCASS works. We're essentially acquiring information that's already in the administrative systems of the institutions.

As you say, institutions are in the position to know exactly the situation, including the payouts of individual academics. They transfer that information to us. We compile that, and through that compilation of the data from each individual institution, we're able to build a national dataset that covers the entire country and allows comparisons across different groups.

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

Would the universities be sharing personal information, such as names or characteristics of that individual with Stats Canada?

[Vincent Dale]

They don't currently share name information. That's one of the things we are looking at as an efficient way of filling these information gaps that I referred to. If we were able to, for example, gather the name associated with each piece of information we already have, we would then be able to link that to existing data sources, such as the census of population. By doing that, it might be an efficient and expedient way of filling that information gap that we've heard about.

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

On that alone, is there an ethical dilemma that you might be faced with in finding out some of that information?

[Vincent Dale]

There are definitely privacy and confidentiality considerations that we have to think about during the process of acquiring the data from institutions. There's a series of internal policies that we have, as well as legislation under which we're authorized to work, that are very much focused on those privacy and confidentiality protections. It's in the process of acquiring the data but also, once it's in the door of Stats Canada, in the way we store and treat that data.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Super. Thank you.

The echo loop we had was actually in the room. When the members' mikes are left on, they pick up the sound we're hearing twice, so I think we have that problem licked now.

Now we'll go over to Mr. Lametti for six minutes, please.

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

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dale and Ms. Leesti.

I guess this is for either one of you: How far away are we from being able to obtain the standardized data for equity-seeking groups that you mentioned in your remarks?

[Vincent Dale]

As I said, we're conducting a feasibility study at the moment, working with seven institutions and working through that question of whether they already have the information and some of the privacy and confidentiality considerations. I'm not able to give you a direct answer to your question. That feasibility study will conclude early next year, and we'll evaluate which way forward we would like to go and what funding mechanisms might be in place to pursue the preferred option. At that point, we would begin to formulate some more precise timelines.

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

Thank you.

Certainly, you're getting data from universities, and you're collating it and coordinating it. I presume that you're also going back and forth with universities on trying to standardize the way in which that data is collected and organized even before it gets into your hands. We've heard from universities that they would like you to standardize even more. How can you pursue that goal as well?

[Vincent Dale]

As I think you heard from previous witnesses, the question of data standardization is an important one. It's an area where we do have some expertise and where we would like to think we have some skill and expertise in working with individual institutions to encourage the adoption of common standards. That's one of the key questions that we're evaluating through this feasibility study: the extent to which additional standardization is required and how we might support institutions in doing that.

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

My last question is a bit out of left field: Is there a way to get data from places like the United States? One of the things that I experienced as a tenured full professor in a law faculty that was trying to work hard at pay equity gaps of all kinds was that—and your statistics seem to demonstrate this—at the entry level it's closer. When you get to full professor.... The things that messed up in our faculty's case—a non-unionized law faculty—were offers from, in particular, the United States or other provinces. They generally went to high-ranking senior men. Sometimes they left, but sometimes they stayed. Then there would be a retention offer, which then completely messed up the pay scales.

Is there any way to get that kind of data?

[Vincent Dale]

It's an issue that we're very aware of. Those increases are reflected in the salaries that we see in our data, but unfortunately, we haven't yet arrived at a method to isolate the specific effects of those person-level negotiations that we know happen.

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

Presumably, you would even be able to track the faculties, so law and business faculties and certain engineering faculties would probably be more prone to this.

[Vincent Dale]

You know, the other thing I might say is that, when trying to understand an issue or a policy concern, I would encourage you to, maybe, think of multiple sources of data. The UCASS would give you good benchmark information and the ability to compare across jurisdictions and across time, but regardless of the issue, you would want to supplement that with additional information, additional research. In that case, it might be quite appropriate to refer to international sources or to various types of research to better understand the environment.

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

Let me ask you a 30,000-foot question. For either one of you, based on the data you're getting, the kinds of inputs you're getting and the kinds of programs you know are out there that you are evaluating with the data, what is working? What kinds of measures are the kinds of measures that work?

[Vincent Dale]

Would you mind elaborating? Could you just extend your last sentence? They are working in what sense...?

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

They are successfully working at eliminating gender gaps, for example, or other kinds of pay equity gaps as opposed to what's not working, although you may want to go there.