Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to the motion put forward by my hon. colleague opposite.
To start, I want to reiterate once again the labour minister's message that we all believe fundamentally in fairness and equity for all women.
The Bilson task force on pay equity found substantial areas of agreement among business, labour and pay equity advocates on a number of key principles, so I do not propose to repeat them all here.
However, the task force was not able to achieve consensus on the issue of implementation methodology. Indeed, there are some unique dimensions to the organizations that fall under federal labour jurisdiction which make compliance with the pay equity law particularly challenging.
I intend to focus on those distinct challenges today. Then I would like to describe how my government is addressing those challenges through a proactive three-point action plan.
As hon. members know, the federal equal pay legislation currently enforced is found in section 11 of the Canadian Human Rights Act and its equal wage guidelines. The equal pay amendment was passed in 1977 and the wage guidelines were last amended nine years later. The legislation prohibits an enterprise under federal jurisdiction from discriminating against workers in female-dominated job categories if the work is equal in value to jobs performed largely by men.
The principle behind the law is sound, logical and fair. We all want to see fairness, and yet many employers have had a lot of difficulty putting it into practice, and not without reason. These companies and others covered by the law face distinct challenges in complying with the law.
The federal labour jurisdiction includes the federal public service as well as the broad range of federal agencies and crown corporations functioning in Canada. It also encompasses private sector firms engaged in activities that span provincial borders.
Within private industry, one could say that the federal reach is small in number but significant in impact.
Almost 12,000 companies fall under federal jurisdiction, representing only about one per cent of all Canadian businesses. The majority of them are small, very small. Indeed, four of five of them employ fewer than 20 workers. In all, about 875,000 people work for federally regulated companies.
Although we are not talking about a lot of companies, we are talking about important ones. These enterprises are engaged in vital industries such as banking, telecommunications, shipping, and interprovincial trucking. Clearly, they play a pivotal role in our national economy and infrastructure.
A number of factors render these federally regulated companies different from the rest of corporate Canada and present unique challenges in addressing pay equity issues.
For one thing, only a handful of companies employ more than 100 employees, yet they employ 86% of the workers who fall under the Canada Labour Code.
Unionization tends to be high in the federal private sector, except in the banking sector. Workers are older than the Canadian average, work slightly longer hours and are paid more than the national average and, with the exception of the banking industry, women are underrepresented in all sectors.
For many of these firms, pay equity is rarely clear-cut. It is affected by multiple factors, including the size of the organization, the nature of its workforce and whether the workforce is represented by a trade union. In spite of these challenges, many companies have made significant progress in implementing the law.
In the federally regulated private sector, women appear to be gradually closing the wage gap. It is not perfect, but it is progress.
Still, some of the strongest criticisms of the current legislation relate to its complaints based nature. Some say it is too reactive.
Under the Human Rights Act, people who believe they are discriminated against are entitled to file complaints with the Human Rights Commission. Part III of the Canada Labour Code also empowers inspectors to notify the commission if they have reasonable grounds to believe that an employer is engaging or has engaged in a discriminatory practice.
My government agrees that a more proactive approach is more appropriate. That is why we have brought forward a package of measures aimed at strengthening compliance with the law. Their focus is proactive, with the aim of avoiding long, drawn-out, highly divisive legal battles like those that have plagued Bell Canada and Air Canada.
The last government studied the issue. We are taking action.
The action plan implemented by my colleague, the hon. Minister of Labour, has three key elements.
First, the labour program provides employers, employees and their representatives with more detailed and comprehensive information to advise them of their obligations under the pay equity law.
Labour officers have begun visiting employers to inform them of their pay equity responsibilities under existing federal legislation. An information document and educational materials have been developed to assist employers.
The labour program has already provided pay equity training to 23 labour officers. Further training sessions will be provided to additional labour officers throughout the year.
This helps in addressing one of the biggest complaints from companies: that they do not fully understand their responsibilities and how to meet them.
The second element of the plan sees the government's mediators and conciliators reaching out to employers and unions during contract negotiations involving pay equity issues. The labour officers have been specially trained to deliver information, feedback and guidance to both parties engaged in collective bargaining. Their services are now available to employers and unions that request them.
The final element of the plan involves compliance and monitoring to ensure that employers understand how to comply with equal pay requirements. The goal is to be proactive: to identify and correct problems before they deteriorate into a messy dispute.
The labour program is hiring 15 compensation specialists who will be providing technical support to employers.
No one will pretend that pay equity is a simple issue. It is complicated and often difficult for all parties, but that does not mean we can ignore it or walk away from our responsibility toward women who are being discriminated against. They need and deserve society's protection.
Society has acknowledged this responsibility, which is why Parliament enshrined the principle of pay equity in the Human Rights Act nearly 30 years ago. We have the law, we have explanatory guidelines, and we have many years of detailed case law to help us move forward.
We have made a lot of excellent progress and we should not think of undoing it. It makes no sense to scrap the law we have in the hopes of eventually coming up with something better.
Instead, we need to acknowledge that the organizations affected by the law could use a little help to do the right thing. We have the capacity to extend that help and we have started doing so. We can and we must continue to do so because it is the best and most responsible solution for everyone involved.
