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.