Status of Women Committee on June 16th, 2009

[Hélène Laurendeau]

Key features that were identified as being essential, proactivity being one of them, were replicated and adopted in this piece of legislation, but this piece of legislation also does what the minister had identified at the time as still being unresolved with what the task force had produced, which was to make sure that the disconnects between collective bargaining and assessment of pay equity were harmonized. In that sense, it has built on the results of the report and has resolved what had been identified as being still problematic in the report.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

It sounds rather like an ideological decision.

I want to come back to the issue of thresholds. You talked about the thresholds that were determined in the act as being comparable to those in other acts that we see across the country, yet we know that the threshold for a predominantly female working group is 70% for groups of under 100 employees, 60% for groups of between 100 and 500, and 55% for groups of over 500. There's a significant difference here.

How did you arrive at the threshold that you did in the PSECA? How was that determined?

[Dan Danagher]

We looked at the 30 years of experience that we had in dealing with and managing complaints, and we looked at the track record of those complaints. With extraordinarily few exceptions, the complaints were generated by groups that were at 70% gender predominance, or significantly greater.

Since the adoption of the Canadian Human Rights Act in 1977, the presence of females in the public service has grown enormously. We are currently sitting right now at a female presence of 56% or thereabouts, I think, in the workforce in the public service. So at some point, we had to look at what was reasonable to support a proactive regime, and 70% seemed to be the one that zeroed in on where the problems had been in the past. It also lined up with, as you say, one of the thresholds that existed in legislation elsewhere, not just in Manitoba; there are other nations, such as New Zealand, that have 70%.

Unfortunately, there is no universal truth for what becomes a gender-predominant group. There is no number that you can look up. It suited our circumstances to set it at 70%, again because of the 30 years of track record that we had.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Sorry, Irene, that's it.

Ms. O'Neill-Gordon.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

I will be sharing my time with Candice.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Yes. That means two minutes each.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

That's right. Thanks.

As we all know, equitable compensation only works when all parties are working together and reach an agreement on all the issues. I know that we have listened to many witnesses who are speaking against this idea, but I also know from working with constituents and from having recently sat on a women's forum that there are many women out there who are happy with this idea.

I'm wondering what kinds of comments you are receiving. What do people see as one of the main achievements for women who are going into this?

[Hélène Laurendeau]

Thank you for your comment, because that reassures me in certain things that we have seen emerging.

I would say that there is one comment that comes back once people have come over the hurdle of understanding what the underpinnings are. One of the things that some women have mentioned is the fact that their voice through the union movement will be a little bit more at the centre rather than marginalized. I would be remiss if I were to tell you that I had a drove of women writing me and telling me that, but of the ones who actually really have been following this issue, there are women who are saying that finally we're getting a voice that is in the middle of the consideration, as opposed to being on the outside or on the margins.

Thank you for asking the question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Gordon.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

I feel that by being negative all the time, we're just bringing them down, so more of a positive attitude....

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Hoeppner.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

I want to echo what my colleague said. When we came into this study, I was very curious to see what the arguments were against the act. I can tell you, from what I've heard from witnesses who are against this, I believe it's purely ideologically and politically charged. I can tell you that after hearing the witnesses and after studying this, I feel more confident than ever that we are moving forward in the best interest of women. I'm very proud of the work that we've done, and I think this is good for women.

I do have one quick question. There has been some issue with pay equity versus equitable compensation. Can you explain that briefly?

[Hélène Laurendeau]

The reason we went with equitable compensation was to better align with the root documents to which Canada is signatory, the international convention on equitable remuneration. We kept it to compensation because compensation, in our vocabulary, is more encompassing than remuneration. We went with equitable because we wanted to go back to what was at the root of the obligation that we took internationally.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you for that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

That's it. We're finished.

I want to thank the witnesses very much for coming to present to us and answer questions.

People may go and have something to eat, and we will move as quickly as possible into business of the day.

Thank you.

[Hélène Laurendeau]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

We have a motion here by Mr. Desnoyers. It is changed from the one that he brought in originally. We're going to discuss it with his amendment, which entirely changes the sense of the motion. I'm going to read it to you:

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(1)(a), the Standing Committee on the Status of Women requests that the Treasury Board Secretariat and the Privy Council produce all documents and analyses that are accessible by standing committees that the Auditor General of Canada used or may have been used in the preparation of its study on gender-based analysis.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(1)(a), the Standing Committee on the Status of Women requests that the Treasury Board Secretariat and the Privy Council produce all documents and analyses, that are accessible by standing committees, that the Auditor General of Canada used or could have used in the preparation of its study on Gender-Based Analysis.

Mr. Desnoyers.

[Luc Desnoyers, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

My reasons are the same as last time, namely that the committee must have access to all of the documents that the Auditor General was not able to consult.

At our last meeting, my colleague Ms. Demers pointed out that in the next-to-last line of the English version, the following is noted:

“that the Auditor General of Canada used or may have been...”.

The motion should have read “could have been“, instead of “may have been“.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Okay. So we will have “that could have been” instead of “may have been”?

[Luc Desnoyers, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

That's right.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Davidson.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

I have a couple of comments and questions about the motion.

I'm not really sure why we are doing this. Is the intent to have all these documents given to the analyst to review, or to just have them deposited with the committee? What are we going to do with these documents? Are we questioning the Auditor General's report? Are we questioning whether she did a proper job with these documents? I just don't understand what the reasoning is behind having a bunch of documents deposited with committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Desnoyers, did you want to explain this?

[Luc Desnoyers, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

The Auditor General was very clear. If you reread the blues, you will see that she did have some discussions, but did not necessarily have access to all of the documents required for her own analysis to determine if everything had been done properly. She observed that departments acted quite differently. Some, although not the vast majority, assumed their obligations fully. The question is how Treasury Board or the Privy Council can accept certain things. I want to see these documents in order to make the right decision.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mrs. Davidson.