Thank you very much for that question.
I will address the first question, which is whether or not there have been any complaints filed. As the member rightly pointed out, the legislation is.... I was appointed in October of 2019, which was approximately a year after the proactive pay equity legislation was passed in Parliament in December of 2018. The act is not yet in force, and we are anticipating that the act will come into force later on in 2021.
At this time, all complaints regarding pay equity are filed under the Canadian Human Rights Act—that's section 11 of the Canadian Human Rights Act—and we do know that from 2010 until the present time there have not been a great number of complaints filed. In fact, there are only about 19 complaints that were filed regarding pay equity during that time period. Of those—in fact, I think only 17 complaints have been filed—there are only nine that are proceeding, and those are largely dealing with public service institutions. Once the act comes into force, it will apply to all employers with 10 or more employees, which is about 4,500 employers across Canada, covering about 1.3 million employees.
The member has properly put forward an interesting question with respect to the levels of pay equity discrimination for ethnic women. Indeed, we know that the pay equity gap is different depending on the characteristics of the women and whether women are characterized by intersectional identities.
We know that in general the wage gap is 89¢; that is, women earn 89¢ on the dollar earned by men in Canada globally. However, racialized women working full time earn an average of only 67¢ on the dollar earned by non-racialized men. Indigenous women, on the other hand, earn approximately 65¢ on the dollar for every non-indigenous male dollar. For newcomer women, it's 71¢ on the male dollar. Disabled women—women living with physical or mental disabilities—are earning only approximately 54¢ on the dollar earned by every male who is non-disabled.
Yes, indeed, there is a differential impact of wage discrimination depending upon the identity of the women involved.