Human Resources committee  The past head of the machinists said, “At the CLC, we believe in immigration, not exploitation.”

Human Resources committee  One of the suggestions that we've had for a long time now would cut across both this area, obviously, and also other areas in employment generally, such as skills shortages, training, and all that sort of stuff. What we've promoted for a long time is that we need a labour market partners forum, where you actually bring together business, labour, government, and other stakeholders to be able to work this out.

Human Resources committee  I can be short, and say, yes. There's a reality here. I think we've seen it even in terms of the evidence that's been given. When you're talking about, and the example you gave, the very specialized person who needs to be brought in, there is a discussion to be had there. Then there are those thousands and thousands of low-skilled, low-paid workers who are very much left vulnerable when they come into this country, and who are expecting that by coming here they might have an avenue to be able to stay at some point.

Human Resources committee  Yes, we will.

Human Resources committee  Thanks for the opportunity to present our views today on behalf of the Canadian Labour Congress. We will be providing the committee with a written submission in the future. We just haven't gotten it translated yet. We represent 3.3 million members across the country. We work in virtually all sectors of the economy.

Pay Equity committee  Our one comment is don't reinvent the wheel. Don't see Groundhog Day one more time. Don't have déjà vu all over again. Implement the task force recommendations. The task force was the most comprehensive. We know that. I was the worker representative from Canada for 12 years on the International Labour Organization.

Pay Equity committee  In any workplace that deals with the issues of wage disparities, unions have to be equal partners in those discussions of the evaluations that go on in terms of occupations and how jobs are evaluated. They have to be part of the discussions as well on how we're going to achieve the pay equity and how you get to that process.

Pay Equity committee  What we can say with confidence right now is that what is out there in the workplace isn't working for people who are facing wage discrimination. That's the reality. Now, if you want to spend the next 200 years doing exactly what we've done in the previous 200 years whereby women are discriminated against in their paycheques, that's fine.

Pay Equity committee  No, but—

Pay Equity committee  You're evaluating the job, not the individual. If I am a casual or a part-time worker in one department, it's the job that's being evaluated. If I move to a different kind of job in another position part time—it would be better if I didn't have to have three part-time jobs—but pay equity is not about the individual, it's about the job.

Pay Equity committee  No, I don't have a clear answer for you on that. What we're saying is the recommendations of the task force were that you would actually have a process that would move quicker. It would move faster. It would be proactive. It's not based on, again, complaints of particular groups, and presumably there would be more resolve to settle this.

Pay Equity committee  Do I get to start with all of it?

Pay Equity committee  You're in a caretaker time with the legislation where the act isn't actually done. We think you have to wipe the slate clean. You have to start all over again. It doesn't do any of the things that the pay equity task force called on it to do. It's not proactive. It doesn't seem to us to deal with the involvement of unions.

Pay Equity committee  Unions don't pay. The employer pays. The employer pays the women less.

Pay Equity committee  If you look at the recommendations that came out of the task force in 2004, and what the role was between employers and employee groupings, unionized or not, and also the whole question of a pay equity commission, this is a larger issue. We are all affected by our biases of how we see our own work and other peoples' work.