Let me address a couple of issues.
I hear all the time in these discussions that you cannot bargain away human rights. First of all, we employers understand and believe that pay equity is a fundamental human right, and what we're trying to sort out is the appropriate way to get there, the appropriate way to solve the wage gap in the environment in which we're required to operate.
It's not a perfect environment. It's a difficult environment, so what we really need to do is find a way to properly problem-solve the pay equity issue. We're not disagreeing it's a human right and we're not disagreeing that the Human Rights Commission and the Human Rights Act have a very important role to play, but we're saying in particular that one of the things that prevents us from getting from where we are today to closing the wage gap is failing to recognize that we have to work on these issues together with our unions and with our employees. You just can't simply continue to bargain as usual and not have both sides at the bargaining table to find a way to work together to close the gap.
Compromises are going to have to be made. For example, if you have a fixed budget to deal with, you might have to slow the rate of increase for male-dominated jobs and accelerate the rate of increase for female-dominated jobs in areas where a gap exists, but both parties have to agree to that. If the unions say they're not prepared to find a way to deal with this budget that they must deal with in realistic terms, and if they're not prepared to understand the market conditions and the factors that go into pay--if all they're saying is that it's business as usual and that closing the gap, Mr. Employer, is your problem--then we're never going to solve the problem.
We don't disagree with proactive employment equity, but what we need to establish and what we want to find is an appropriate way to work with our unions on an ongoing basis--not just in collective bargaining--in a problem-solving way that will get us from where we are today to closing the gap in a meaningful way that makes sense in a market-driven economy.