Status of Women Committee on Oct. 28th, 2010

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you.

I have a question for Ms. Drolet or Ms. Michaud. With the new Statistics Canada forms, will you have as much information as before?

[Sylvie Michaud]

Do you mean…?

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

I mean the new census forms.

[Sylvie Michaud]

Well, we won't know until the survey is completed. Sampling will be expanded under the new voluntary survey, but we are also expecting a lower response rate. Until we're out in the field, we won't know about the actual impact on the data.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Ms. Pageau, I would like you to explain once again something you referred to earlier. In your presentation, you said, and I quote: “There are a number of reasons why a characterization of pay equity as simply an aspect of labour or employment law should be avoided.”

Could you be more explicit?

[Gisèle Pageau]

If I understood your question, you're referring to the Task Force's recommendations. One of those recommendations is:

the adoption of a new proactive pay equity law; the expansion of pay equity coverage to include women and Aboriginal workers, workers with disabilities and racialized workers;

The report also recommends:

that all employees under federal jurisdiction be covered by the new proactive pay equity legislation, including non-unionized employees, part-time, casual, seasonal and temporary workers;

These are very important recommendations that were made by the Task Force. They should all be incorporated in the legislation.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Do you think that…?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Cathy McLeod]

I'm very sorry, but it's now Ms. Mathyssen's turn.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I must admit to a certain level of frustration. Terms like “equality” and “equity” are bandied about, and there doesn't seem to be a real and clear understanding that equal pay for equal work is far different from equal pay for work of equal value.

I go back to the Bell example, because I worked for Bell while I was going to school. As a long-distance operator, I endured horrendous hours in terms of sometimes all night, certainly weekends. And it was known at that time that Bell operators were extremely well trained. The training was commensurate with craft, with the male workers at Bell. And yet the pay was far different.

When we start to look at the situation.... Regarding doctors, we had female doctors come to this committee to talk about non-traditional work and the fact that, because of the situation women face, their work was not valued in the same way as males'. It seems to me that's what it comes down to, the devaluing of women's work.

While I know that is entrenched, it seems to me there is an obligation to pull us out of the previous century, or even two centuries, and say that women do important jobs and they must be recognized for the skills they bring. And let's get rid of this market-driven thing, because that's driven down wages not just for women but also for men. It's a force that employers use over and over to drive down wages.

I want you to comment in terms of this devaluation of women's work and what we need to get into the 21st century.

[Gisèle Pageau]

The best case to give you an example of how.... It's not just equal work for equal work. It's equal value.

For instance, the most famous case is how we value zookeepers, who take care of animals, compared to women, who take care of children. The zookeepers have been found to be making about 30% more than what the day care women are making. In the Bell pay equity case, for instance, the operators, especially the 911 operators who work under so much stress, were not being compensated, for instance, to a person who puts up poles in the woods and sets up some of the telephone lines. It's about looking at what we do that is different and comparing the value of it.

It's pretty disheartening that we're still not able to grasp this. Pay equity is very complicated. I don't pretend to know everything about pay equity and how we come to it, but there's something very wrong when you have a zookeeper making a lot more money than a day care worker in charge of our children, maybe one of our future leaders. It's very disheartening.

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

Mr. Durber.

[Paul Durber]

Could I give another very simple example of why the old equal-pay laws don't work? Under an equal-pay law, by and large you compared two jobs only to find out whether they were identical or not. For example, the cleaner who happens to be a lady—and I did work for the House of Commons for a while, so I know a little bit about the so-called cleaning women here—if they happened not to be having to carry a ladder, which the male workers might have to do, they couldn't be compared. So their incredible restrictions sound artificial, but you couldn't actually get at the work that was being done if there were any differences.

Under the current international rules that Mary mentioned earlier of equal pay for work of equal value, we can look at all the aspects of the work, and that's important to give people—employees and employers—the notion that we're being fair. So underlying “equal pay for work of equal value” is the notion of fairness. We look at all aspects of work, including stress, as you mentioned.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Cathy McLeod]

Thank you.

We have Ms. Brown now.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to go back to Stats Canada if I may. I just want to follow up on that comment you made about our having a lot of new doctors who are female. Obviously they're not making the same pay as somebody who might have 30 years of experience.

If I go back and look at your graph—it doesn't have a number on it, it just says “proportion of population aged 25-54 working full-time”—I see that in 1976 the population was 89% men and 37% women. Yet in 2009 we have men at 78.8%, women at 62%. That's going to explain a whole lot of how we got closer and closer to the wage gap being diminished. As we move forward—and this is what I was getting to in my question earlier—we see more women going into more technologically driven jobs. I think of some of the jobs in the health care sector, for instance, where a lot of women are going into jobs in our hospitals now who are technologists, who are very highly trained. That in itself is going to, over the years with the experience they are garnering, bring that wage gap closer and closer, is it not?

[Marie Drolet]

The chart you're referring to, the proportion of the population working full-time, that's 89% of men of that age who work full-time, so we've seen a small decrease in the proportion of men working full-time and a large increase in the number of women working full-time. That does not necessarily mean it's going to reflect in the gender wage gap. This is based on the number of people who are working.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

But as we see these women who are now in the workforce gaining experience.... You made the comment about it being new doctors who are in the workplace. As they gain experience, part of their wage is commensurate with the experience they acquire, is it not?

[Marie Drolet]

Yes, it is, and we know the wage gap in the health occupations is quite small. So over time, if it's already quite small it's not really going to be a contributing factor to the narrowing wage gap as a whole, because these are aggregate numbers. They're based on averages. Of course there's a distribution around every average, so this is just very high-level analysis. I think what you're really interested in is very specific, occupation-to-occupation comparisons, which is not part of what I've presented today.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

You made the comment that over 13 years we have narrowed the gap by 3%. My contention would be that as women grow in their experience....

I worked as a draftsman in an engineering office. I was paid equivalent to what an entry-level male draftsman would be making. But I was not making the same wage as the design draftsman at the desk next to me, who had 25 years experience over me. My expectation, had I stayed in that career, is that my experience and years of involvement in that craft would have narrowed that gap very quickly, because I had education that he didn't have. I see that as a real proponent for us as females moving forward in the workforce.

[Marie Drolet]

That's why I think it's important to adjust these wage gaps for such things as education and work experience. It's so that you'd be comparing people more equally.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

That is happening as we see equal work for equal pay. As an entry-level draftsman whose pay was equal to what a male draftsman would have been paid, I had no wage gap.

[Marie Drolet]

We know that the wage gap is smaller for new entrants into the labour market, whether it be by age or by experience. That tends to grow over time, just because women are more likely to have career interruptions. They are more likely to work part of the year or part-time at various points in their lives.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

That's personal choice.

I'll give the rest of my time to Mrs. Grewal.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Cathy McLeod]

There are 20 seconds left, and two other people wanted to do a 20-second response. Mr. Durber and--

[Sylvie Michaud]

Can I just add--

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Cathy McLeod]

We'll let Mr. Durber do it. You have ten seconds now, and then--