Status of Women Committee on Oct. 26th, 2010

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Cathy McLeod]

I'd like to call the meeting to order and thank our speakers today for coming in on this nice early fall morning.

You will have 10 minutes each to do your presentation. We will start with Kate McInturff.

You have 10 minutes.

[Kate McInturff, Executive Director, Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action]

Thanks very much.

I was anticipating five minutes so I'll be brief. Perhaps there will be more time for questions.

Thank you for asking me to appear today. I appreciate the invitation to speak on Bill C-471.

There has been a lot of discussion about how you measure the wage gap between men and women in Canada, but I think by any measure we can say that pay inequity exists in Canada today. There is no substantial research showing anything other than that, either by the government's own measure or by the measures of organizations such as the OECD. Whether you compare hourly wages or annual earnings, all the data demonstrates that when men and women go to work in Canada, they come home with different paycheques.

When a person shows up for work on time, performs their duties, and meets their obligations to their employers, we expect that they will be paid for their work, yet for nearly two hours out of every full day of work, women are not being paid. More than that, women are not being paid because they are women. This is the heart of the human rights claim: that it is discriminatory, that the wage gap is based on discrimination against women because they are women.

That kind of discrimination is precisely what our own charter protects Canadian citizens against. That is what the Government of Canada is obliged to protect its citizens against, under both its own charter and a number of international norms and conventions, including: the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which requires the government to take proactive measures to ensure that such inequity does not continue; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which protects the economic rights of men and women equally; the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which takes as one of its critical areas of concern the economy and women's access and full participation in the economy; and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It's worth noting that most of the monitoring bodies internationally that examine Canada's compliance have cited Canada for the continuing gap and failure to redress that gap in pay equity. For example, Canada accepted recommendation 16 under the first Universal Periodic Review to redress the wage gap through, among other things—and these are the words of the government—“pay equity legislation”.

These obligations to the human rights of Canadians cannot be subject to collective bargaining. Subjecting human rights to collective bargaining is analogous to suggesting that when someone breaks their leg they should sit back and wait for a few months while their employer and the government decide who's going to pay, how much, if anything, and when, so that they can maybe access health care.

Repealing the PSEC act and implementing the recommendations of the Pay Equity Task Force in a timely manner—in short, enacting Bill C-471—will ensure that Canada is meeting its obligations to uphold the human rights of everyone who lives and works here in Canada. This is what the government has obligated itself to do under the charter and under the international human rights instruments I've mentioned. This is what I believe they should do.

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Cathy McLeod]

That was three and a half minutes, so it leaves us a lot of time for questions. Thank you.

Next we have Barb Byers, executive vice-president of the Canadian Labour Congress.

Welcome, Barb. You have 10 minutes.

[Barbara Byers, Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress]

Thanks very much.

I also have prepared shorter remarks because I think we want to engage in the discussion with people here in the room.

I'm going to forewarn you that this will be a verbal presentation this morning, but we will send over our presentation as soon as it comes out of translation at our office. Just to make sure that you're not short on things to read, we did bring you copies of our research paper number 47, “Pay Inequity”, our analysis of the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act. That should give you a little bit of time to read before you get the other remarks.

As always, we want to thank you on behalf of the 3.2 million members of the Canadian Labour Congress for having us here to present our views on Bill C-471. As you know, the CLC brings together national and international unions, federations of labour, and labour councils. We work in every community, in all kinds of occupations, and in all parts of Canada.

This bill provides for the implementation of the recommendations of the task force on pay equity. As you know, these recommendations were the result of years of careful and comprehensive study and consultation and were widely supported by labour and women's organizations. The study could be the most significant and in-depth study of pay equity anywhere that we've been able to find.

The task force recommended a series of measures that would have transformed the federal pay equity regime and made it more effective and fair for women working in the federal sector. I'm going to highlight some key recommendations that the Canadian Labour Congress singled out for support when the report was issued in 2004. I'm also going to contrast these recommendations with the Conservative government's response to the task force, which is the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act, or what I'm going to just call ECA.

I just want to say as well that this is a little bit like déjà vu: how many times do we end up appearing in front of this committee on pay equity in some form? It's time to get the job done.

The task force recommended that “Parliament enact new stand-alone, proactive pay equity legislation in order that Canada can more effectively meet its internal obligations and domestic commitments, and that such legislation be characterized as human rights legislation”.

This recognition that pay equity is a fundamental human right acknowledges that we require systemic solutions to eliminate systemic discrimination. In contrast, the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act completely ignores this fundamental recommendation and proposes the exact opposite, relegating pay equity to the bargaining table.

The task force recognized that Canadian workers who belonged to other designated equity-seeking groups also experienced wage discrimination. A proactive pay equity law would be expanded to cover racialized workers, aboriginal workers, and workers with disabilities. This expansion of pay equity was ignored by ECA.

The task force placed the onus on employers to correct discriminatory wage disparities. It also obligated employers to work with unions and employee groups by creating pay equity committees to prepare and monitor pay equity plans in all workplaces, unionized or not. These committees should include a significant proportion of women workers from predominantly female job classes, and the plans would cover all workers, regardless of full-time, part-time, contract, or casual status.

Although the current government labelled its Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act “proactive”, we are not convinced that this is so. That act does not place the responsibility for eliminating discriminatory wages on employers alone; it introduces market forces as a factor for consideration when valuing women's work in the public sector. It only targets certain employers, redefines a “female predominant” group, and restricts the comparator groups, thus making it more difficult to establish where wage discrimination exists. This is not proactive pay equity legislation in any form.

The pay equity task force proposed the establishment of a separate pay equity commission to assist employees, employers, and unions to provide education on pay equity issues and to resolve any disagreements. Rather than establishing a separate body for specific pay equity expertise, the government's ECA refers disputes to the Public Service Labour Relations Board, prohibits unions from filing complaints, and compels women to file complaints alone, without the support of their union.

It's difficult to imagine a system further from the vision articulated by the pay equity task force, despite the government's claims that they acted in the spirit of its recommendations.

It's been six and a half years since the task force on pay equity tabled its report and recommendations and six and a half years since the Canadian Labour Congress and others have been advocating for its implementation. Given the amount of work that went into the development of the task force, it's shocking and quite frankly shameful that this report has been relegated to the archives without any meaningful implementation.

But women have been waiting far longer than six and half years. We've been waiting for decades and decades and decades. We've waited while we've haggled with resistant employers at the bargaining table. We've waited while settlements have been held up by employers who drag their feet in lengthy court proceedings, and, as some of us heard just last weekend at a conference in the Bell Canada case, 18% of the women who were affected died while that was being fought out. We've waited at great expense in many ways.

We've waited, and we've advocated for proactive pay equity legislation, as leaving the matter to collective bargaining or to a complaint-based system simply does not help us close the wage gap for women in this country. While we wait, the debt owed to women who were caught in the wage gap continues to mount: women with children to raise, women who deserve a dignified retirement, and women in every sector and community in our country.

Justice delayed is justice denied. We urge you to support this private member's bill and to bring proactive pay equity to Canada's working women.

Merci beaucoup.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

That was a good brief, Barbara. Thank you. That was great.

[Barbara Byers]

We're ready for questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Now we'll hear from Ms. Côté, the women's and human rights officer for the Public Service Alliance of Canada, and Ms. Berry.

Ms. Côté, will you share the time with Ms. Berry? Or will you do all of the presentation, with Ms. Berry taking part in the answers?

[Andrée Côté, Women's and Human Rights Officer, Membership Programs Branch, Public Service Alliance of Canada]

I'll be speaking. Thank you.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada appreciates this opportunity to share our comments and recommendations in regard to Bill C-471, the Pay Equity Task Force Recommendations Act.

We have provided you with our brief and supporting documentation in French, but I have not had time to prepare speaking notes in French. I apologize for that. So I will give my presentation in English. I will be pleased, of course, to respond to questions in French.

PSAC represents 185,00 members from coast to coast to coast. The majority of our members are women. After years of tribunal hearings and court cases in the pursuit of pay equity, it's no surprise that we and our members were outraged when the Conservative government stripped public sector workers of their right to pay equity by including the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act in the Budget Implementation Act and forcing it through Parliament in just a few weeks.

PSECA is fundamentally flawed and cannot be improved by amendment. It must be abrogated, as provided in BillC-471.

In May 2009, the PSAC came to this committee and outlined in detail our concerns with PSECA, so I'll review them in a very summary way today.

The Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act will, in a nutshell, do four things: make it more difficult to claim pay equity; transform pay equity from a human rights to an equitable compensation matter that must be addressed at the bargaining table; completely remove pay equity from the human rights framework and prohibit federal public sector workers from filing pay equity complaints under the Canadian Human Rights Act; and prohibit unions from representing their own members by fining them for assisting their members in filing pay equity complaints with the Public Service Labour Relations Board.

Our more detailed analysis of the PSECA is in the document entitled “The End of Pay Equity for Women in the Federal Public Service” that is appended to our brief.

The proposed regulatory framework that is being examined by the federal government, and by Treasury Board in particular, would make things even worse. The proposed regulations would impose a higher burden of proof to demonstrate the existence of a so-called “pay equity matter” under PSECA. The regulations would trivialize several female-predominant job classes and would propose the use of wrong comparators for the purpose of comparing women's work of equal value.

This PSECA law is so flawed that PSAC has challenged its constitutional validity in courts. The case is now proceeding. We have also filed a communication with the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, which is appended to our brief. You can consult that.

The PSECA does not solve any of the many problems identified with the ongoing complaints-based system under the Canadian Human Rights Act, and other federally regulated workplaces are still having to deal with this ineffective system. For example, the PSAC has an outstanding pay equity complaint against Canada Post that we filed in 1983 and it is still before the courts.

It's precisely because of the failure of the complaints-based model and the ineffectiveness and discriminatory impact of the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act that PSAC fully supports Bill C-471 and calls for the immediate abrogation of this ill-advised and ill-conceived piece of legislation.

In addition to eliminating the PSECA, there's a need for real proactive pay equity legislation. In its groundbreaking report entitled “Pay Equity: A Fundamental Human Right”, the task force concluded that the existing complaints-based legislation under the Canadian Human Rights Act needs to be replaced by a proactive pay equity law.

Last week, Treasury Board spokesperson Hélène Laurendeau came to this committee and told you that PSECA is proactive and that it incorporates several key recommendations from the pay equity task force. She even suggested that the PSECA builds on proactive models such as the Quebec Pay Equity Act.

In fact, PSECA takes an approach that is in direct opposition to the task force recommendations. For example, PSECA transforms pay equity into a labour relations issue subject to bargaining. The pay equity task force was very clear in its recommendation that the process for achieving pay equity be separated from the process for negotiating collective agreements. The task force extensively studied, consulted, and discussed the issue, and concluded that pay equity is a human rights issue, not a labour relations matter. Pay equity is a mechanism for achieving women's right to equality in the workplace, not an issue to be used as a bargaining chip.

The task force calls for the adoption of a proactive pay equity law that places positive obligations on the employers to review compensation systems—

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

The people responsible for simultaneous interpretation are asking that the speaker slow down a bit. They are having difficulty following.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Could you please slow down a little?

[Andrée Côté]

I hope I'll be okay on the time. I will try to slow down a little.

The pay equity task force calls for the adoption of a truly proactive pay equity law. That means placing positive obligations on employers to review compensation systems, to identify gender-based inequities, and to take steps to eliminate them. It includes timeframes for various steps in the process and mechanisms for maintaining pay equity.

The task force recommends also the establishment of joint pay equity committees to oversee the development and the maintenance of pay equity and the creation of a pay equity commission and a pay equity tribunal.

By contrast, the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act does not have any provisions giving unions the right to the information or data required to do an equitable compensation assessment, the right to paid time to participate in an equitable compensation assessment, the right to training, the creation of pay equity committees, and so on. The PSECA stipulates a joint responsibility of employers and unions, whereas the pay equity task force specifically recognized that joint responsibility for pay equity cannot exist in an environment where there is an imbalance between the power of employers and that of employees and their unions.

The position of the federal government as both employer and legislator is a clear example of this imbalance. Nowhere was it more obvious and ironic than in the 2009 federal budget, which contained both the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act and the legislated wage rates that were imposed on public sector workers.

The PSECA is a very far cry from real proactive pay equity legislation, and the proposed regulations that will bring the PSECA into force are, even more so, taking us backwards. As I mentioned, the regulations would specify a higher burden of proof. Women will be required to prove both gender discrimination and wage discrimination. They will provide for comparing female-predominant job classes to job classes that involve similar work, not work of equal value.

Even the unilateral consultation process that was engaged in by Treasury Board is flawed to the point where we question its legitimacy. While PSAC has participated when requested in two consultation sessions, dates have been unilaterally imposed, documents have been sent at the very last minute, and most of the presenters and facilitators in these consultations appeared to be employer oriented. The comments provided by PSAC and other bargaining agents from the first round of consultations were not included in the documents for the second round of consultations.

In 2010, far too many working women are not being paid the full value of their work because of residual systemic sex discrimination in the workplace. Indeed, as Kate mentioned, CEDAW, the United Nations committee, has remarked on several occasions that Canada is not doing enough on the issue of pay equity.

More than 30 years after the adoption of the Canadian Human Rights Act, it's time to do something to end this form of pervasive discrimination. The federal government should be playing a leadership role in this regard. The Public Service Alliance of Canada, on behalf of its members, strongly urges this committee to support the passage of Bill C-471 and to once again call on the federal government to fully implement the pay equity task force recommendations.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much. You have almost one minute left.

Now we will proceed. As many of you know, we'll begin with questions and answers. The questions and answers both take up seven minutes, so I will ask everyone to be mindful of that.

We'll begin with the Liberals and Ms. Neville.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks to all of you for coming.

I am sitting here with a real sense of déjà vu. We've been through this many times before.

I want to ask some questions about being proactive, but I was struck by your comment, Ms. Côté, about the very most recent negotiation that took place. I'm wondering if you could elaborate on that.

[Andrée Côté]

Yes, Madam Neville.

I'm referring to the consultations that were organized by Treasury Board on the development of the regulations under the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act. The legislation is not yet in force pending the adoption of these regulations.

We participated in April and June in two two-day sessions of consultations and have been most frustrated by the process itself, which, first of all, we considered not fulsome consultation, to the point that we questioned the extent to which they were done in good faith. Second, but more seriously, we're really concerned about what is being proposed in the regulatory framework, which will not improve in any way on the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act. On the contrary, we're really concerned that it's going to take us backwards.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

In your view, are the consultations legitimate consultations? When I ask that, here's what I mean: do you have any indication that your concerns are being incorporated into the regulations and the discussions?

[Andrée Côté]

It's a bit premature to have a definite conclusion. We will be meeting again with Treasury Board representatives. We have just received an invitation to that effect, so perhaps subsequent to our written comments we sent them this summer they are going to take our concerns a bit more seriously. We'll hope so, but even if they do, frankly, the legislative framework is so flawed that I don't see how we can improve things. But at this point we're very concerned that the regulations will very much worsen a bad law.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

The PSECA or ECA--I don't know--

[Barbara Byers]

I'll capitulate to going PSECA.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

--is deemed to be proactive legislation. Quite clearly, you don't see it as proactive legislation. Could you elaborate on that? Further, because I don't want to take too much time right now, I would ask if you could, based on your experience in labour negotiations, explain with some clear examples why you believe the collective bargaining process is not conducive to achieving pay equity.

[Andrée Côté]

Perhaps my colleague can pitch in, but I'll take the first point on why we consider this legislation not proactive. The pay equity task force--and I did bring this very heavy report with me just so the members can appreciate--

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

It is substantial.

[Andrée Côté]

I'm not going to drop it and make a lot of noise, but it is a report of almost 600 pages report that has canvassed the issue in much detail. If you haven't read it, I would encourage you to take a look at it, because it really does answer a lot of the questions and points us in the right direction.

In this report, the pay equity task force did point out the different characteristics of a truly proactive pay equity regime. A proactive law puts the obligation on the employers--and I stress “the employers” because they are the ones who control the pay practices and the workplace. It puts an obligation on the employer to examine his or her pay practices, to discuss with the unions how to identify potential pay gaps, to create a pay equity committee that would develop a plan on how to address any existing pay gaps, and to request timelines within a certain delay, usually a three- or four-year timeframe. Then it proposes a mechanism to maintain pay equity through the years, because if there's no mechanism, it will gradually slip and pay equity will be eroded.

There's a whole series of steps and this report is really a blueprint of all those steps that are totally non-existent under the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act. In that act, as you can see, the only real obligation that's put on the employer is to provide a list to the union on which they say how many men and how many women are hired in the job group. That's it. The rest is all up for grabs and will be discussed at bargaining tables. It will completely disrupt bargaining and will take even more time, I think, than what is currently happening. It's certainly a far cry from proactive pay equity legislation.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Can you comment a bit on the bargaining process, Ms. Berry?

[Helen Berry, Classification and Equal Pay Specialist, Public Service Alliance of Canada]

Sure. I think the bottom line is that this is a human right, and negotiations just don't lend themselves well to the back and forth, to the concessions that get made or put on the table, and things like that. We certainly don't want our members suffering in regard to their right to equal pay on the basis of some other group, on the competing interests that happen at the negotiating table.

I think, as Madame Côté has suggested, that the bargaining table just isn't.... The way the legislation is written, it's going to be so complex, and there are other issues that are being dealt with at the negotiation table. We just don't know how it's going to be workable, looking at the regulations and looking at the information that will be required from the employer. We just don't see how it's workable on that hand, but the more important point, I think, is around the human rights issue. You don't want to bargain away human rights on the basis of some other issue coming up at the table for the bargaining group.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you.