Status of Women Committee on Feb. 4th, 2021

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

All right.

Those tools will really help them. As you said yourself, Ms. Jensen, the act dates back to 2018. We're now in 2021, and we look forward to it being properly applied.

In your speaking notes, you also talked about the stereotypes and myths regarding pay equity. What are they? How do they delay the application of the act?

[Karen Jensen]

The concept of pay equity is certainly based on the fact that there are myths about the value of the work done by women in the labour market. However, I would not say that the myths and stereotypes have an effect on the implementation progress of the act. Rather, I would say that we are preparing for it to be implemented.

Part of our job is really to educate employers so that they know that systemic discrimination is based on myths and stereotypes that we are not aware of and that are unintentional, but that have crept into our compensation systems over the years.

We also need to teach them that proactively reviewing our compensation systems is actually essential for eliminating the effects of those myths and stereotypes on these systems.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

You talked about giving employers three years to develop their action plans.

Do you believe that this is realistic? Will three years be enough?

What is this deadline based on? How did you determine that it would be three years? Could it be shorter?

[Karen Jensen]

The act provides that each employer has three years to develop a pay equity plan. Parliament made that choice when it drafted the legislation.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Based on what you have observed since you have been working—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Your time is up.

Ms. Mathyssen, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Jensen, just a few months ago we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, and they talked about the need for pay equity. In 1977, equal pay for equal work was enshrined in the Canadian Human Rights Act, but it took until 2018 to actually get pay equity legislation. As Madame Larouche was talking about in terms of the delays, it took three years to see potential regulations come into place, which we actually haven't seen yet. They continue to get pushed back and pushed back.

Do you have an idea or do you have any inside knowledge? I asked the government last week whether they could say when those regulations were coming. They said it could be the fall, or it could be later. Do you happen to know anything more about when the regulations will actually come into place?

[Karen Jensen]

The regulations were pre-published in the Canada Gazette, part I, on November 14, 2020, as I'm sure the member knows. As a pay equity division of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, we have been actively involved in examining those regulations and working with ESDC—Employment and Social Development Canada—to ensure the regulations are sound. There was a 60-day period following the prepublication for submissions to be made by interested parties. I believe that was done and there was a significant interest in those regulations.

The process will proceed. I cannot comment on that. I am not privy to that information, nor is that my role as a federal pay equity commissioner, but I can certainly assure the member that we are actively involved in reviewing the regulations and ensuring that they're transparent, clear and understandable for Canadian businesses and Canadian unions to work with in the development of their pay equity plans. Those regulations are necessary to support the act coming into force, and we do know that the government has indicated that it's likely the act will come into force later on this year.

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

Obviously it can be very frustrating. It's been 50 years, and now we're being told that it's only after those regulations are in place, whenever that may be.

I understand that it has to be done well and it's not something you take lightly, but this work could have potentially been done more effectively so that women weren't waiting so long. For the employers to have three years to draft plans, a potential additional three to five years to go forward with the implementation of those plans, we're looking at pay equity potentially not going forward for many women until 2029–30.

Could you talk about the significance that has?

I see it as a sort of snowball effect. In terms of the longer this takes, the longer women go without, and the longer women go without, actively, in terms of their paycheques, actively in terms of that equality, that human right...can you talk about the impact of that?

[Karen Jensen]

Yes. Thank you for that question.

Most employees who are eligible to receive a pay equity adjustment will receive that adjustment the day after the posting of the pay equity plan, which is three years after the coming into force of the legislation. If the act comes into force in 2021, that will mean that, in 2024, we anticipate that most women will begin to receive the pay equity adjustment—if one is necessary—based on the development of the plan.

Under subsection 61(2) of the act, employers can phase in increases over three years—that's for large employers—or five years for smaller employers who have 10 to 99 employees. The adjustments still have to be made starting in the third year after the coming into force of the act and ending in either the sixth or the eighth year after the coming into force.

I would say that, yes, there's a three-year period during which employers and unions, if a pay equity committee is required, will be working to develop a pay equity plan. As many of the members know, the development of a pay equity plan is a complex exercise that takes time, and certainly takes time when it's being done in a committee.

It will, of course, be incumbent upon employers and unions who are working in a pay equity committee to use a collaborative approach in the development of their pay equity plan to avoid having to come to the Pay Equity Commission, to my office, for assistance in resolving disputes. The more they're able to work collaboratively together, the shorter the delay and the greater likelihood that women are going to be able to get the money in an expeditious fashion.

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

Madam Chair, you were muted. I think you were trying to say that my time was done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Yes, I was.

I was eloquently saying that we were going into our second round of questioning, beginning with Ms. Shin.

[Nelly Shin, Conservative, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you so much. I so appreciate your presentations today. I feel that this is the right step forward.

I really appreciated my other colleagues talking about the intersectionality of racialized women and the impact of the two.... My question has to do with the culture and the myths and the stereotypes, and the lack of respect and dignity that is underlying the need for this Pay Equity Act.

Ms. Jensen, when you were receiving those complaints that you referred to as being very painful—those litigations.... When these women complained about unequal pay, were those cases indicative of the systemic lack of equality that our country has acknowledged culturally, or were they specific to certain behaviours and attitudes in the workplace or from the employer?

[Karen Jensen]

That's a very interesting question. It really does cause me to reflect on almost three decades now of work that I've been doing in the area of pay equity.

As I mentioned, I saw the toll that this kind of litigation took on the women themselves and also on the employers, who sometimes felt personally attacked that they had a discriminatory wage system in place, and that was never the intention. No one ever intentionally set out to create a system of compensation that was intentionally discriminating against women.

There was a lot of angst and a lot of struggle around realizing that this may have crept into the compensation system, and there were a lot of questions. How did that happen? How in the world could we in Canada have reached this point in time where we still have systems that devalue the work done by women?

The way I try to explain it to employers and to unions alike is that it's a historical problem that has developed over time, whereby certain roles that have been undertaken by women in a home environment—the care of children, administrative duties, social duties, taking care of the family's social agenda, that kind of stuff—have been largely taken for granted and not acknowledged as really valuable work contributing to the economy. That is an attitude that prevailed a long time ago and that found its way into our compensation systems. The kinds of work that women would do—caring for others, cleaning up after a meeting or as a clerk, attending to the needs of a superior—were seen to be somehow less valuable because they came naturally to women; that's just what women did.

When you explain to employers that this is just something that has crept into our system. What we have to do now is remove from women the obligation to complain about that and put the obligation, as we're doing with this proactive legislation, on the employers, saying, “Whether you think you have a problem or not, whether you ever intended to discriminate against women, which we assume you didn't, you now have to look at your compensation systems to find out if, somehow, discriminatory pay practices have crept in. That's your job, and I'm going to ensure that it's done.”

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good.

Now we'll go to Ms. Hutchings.

Ms. Hutchings, you have five minutes.

[Gudie Hutchings, Liberal, Long Range Mountains, NL]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks to both of our witnesses today.

Congratulations, Ms. Jensen, on being the first federal commissioner and, Mr. Willbond, on being the director general on this first act of a proactive pay equity plan for our country. Thanks for the work that you've done, and thanks for the hard work that you're going to be doing.

Ms. Jensen, in your opening remarks, you were chatting about the process. Can you go into a little more detail on the consultation process, how you got to where you are and what groups you spoke with and where? Did you get into rural situations, as my colleague...? Ms. Wong always talks about seniors. I always talk about rural areas. Can you give us a few lines on that, please, and on the consultation process?

[Karen Jensen]

Absolutely, I'm very happy to do that.

When I first assumed this role as pay equity commissioner in 2019, I was very eager to speak directly with all of the various people involved in the federal jurisdiction—employers, employees, unions, non-governmental organizations such as LEAF and the YWCA, and various other organizations that are active on behalf of women throughout Canada. It was very important to me to hear what the concerns were, and not just from the point of view of how we were going to implement this complicated or challenging legislation, but also the concerns: What's the impact going to be on my business? How are unions going to be able to work effectively with employers when we have a difficult bargaining relationship? What is going to change? How are you going to make this any better for us?

In particular, I wanted to hear from employee organizations about how we could get the word out so that employees across Canada, whether they were in rural settings or urban settings, would know about these rights. In response to some of the suggestions that were made by the stakeholder groups, we've been developing these tools that we hope will respond to the needs. I've been really proactive about it. For example, I did a YouTube video with a woman who has a very wide audience of moms at work. I received enormous feedback from all over the country from women who are mothers who were very confused about what pay equity means and how it relates to their lives and their workplaces and so on.

I'm really committed to using traditional media, social media and every kind of approach I can to reach out. We have a very well-developed communications plan to ensure that we get the word out.

[Gudie Hutchings, Liberal, Long Range Mountains, NL]

Thank you for that answer.

Ms. Jensen, I've heard from many small businesses that they do need that three years. Can you comment on that and tell us why exactly, in your professional opinion, businesses, especially small businesses, need this time to get caught up?

[Karen Jensen]

Yes. That relates really to the previous question. The consultations with small businesses and large businesses across Canada have led me to believe that even before the pandemic there were concerns about the challenges associated with implementing pay equity. As I indicated, it's a technical exercise. For small businesses in particular, it's an exercise that's often done by someone with very little training who may be doing it off the side of their desk, so to speak. They require enormous support to be able to do that. We are, as a division, committed to providing that support.

You know, Parliament decided that three years was the appropriate amount of time to give employers to develop a pay equity plan, but was also, I think, thinking that the division—we are legislatively mandated to do this—would provide good educational support to do that. We are doing that. Then, of course, the pandemic hit. Many businesses across Canada in the federal jurisdiction are struggling for their own survival. This time period of three years is important to give those businesses a chance to get their feet back under them, economically speaking, and to get the support they need to develop their plans.

I must say that I am—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'm sorry. That's your time.

We're going now to Madame Larouche.

Ms. Larouche, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I would like to talk about the potential impact of the act and its importance during this period of economic recovery as the crisis comes to an end. Women have been far more affected than men by the pandemic. For us to have influence, we must have leverage.

To what extent could pay equity in the government sector affect the achievement of pay equity in the private sector? How might it inspire the entire sector to do more going forward?

[Karen Jensen]

Could I clarify?

Are you talking about how pay equity influences the effects of the pandemic?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Actually, I was saying that, in this period of economic recovery, it is important that the government sector be willing to improve women's wages and reduce the wage gap between men and women. However, the private sector must be just as willing.

How might your actions in the government sector influence the private sector?

[Karen Jensen]

You want to know how the government sector influences the private sector?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

I'm talking about implementing measures. Could this snowball and impact other businesses that are not affected by the act, for example?