Pay Equity committee  I read and listened to some of the previous testimony, and I know they mentioned some countries internationally, such as Sweden and Norway. One of the things you find there—again, it's what others have said before—is that their approach to the issue of pay equity has been wide-ra

Pay Equity committee  When we talk about maintenance of pay equity, it means you have to continue to run your audits. To go back to something that Ms. Borowy also talked about, the gap is a reflection of a bigger issue in terms of gaps. For example, if you have a company that says they did a pay aud

Pay Equity committee  No. Since then, other companies have come forth and announced they've run pay equity studies. Salesforce was one that announced they did an audit, and they found they did have a gap. I think they ended up saying they spent two million dollars to three million dollars to close the

Pay Equity committee  Right, exactly.

Pay Equity committee  Yes, you're absolutely right. There's a reluctance around reporting out that information. It's very private. It's what you're making, and no one wants to share that. It makes people very uncomfortable, but if you report out in terms of averages and bands, then yes, companies can

Pay Equity committee  I think so. We've shown that pay transparency has been very effective in terms of closing the gaps, even within organizations. As I mentioned, Gap Inc., before they came out and publicly said what they did, ran a pay equity study, and they continued to do that as part of their wh

Pay Equity committee  Yes.

Pay Equity committee  Don't have negotiations. Just say this is what the salary is.

Pay Equity committee  I think both, to a certain extent, because the U.K. government has either just passed its regulations or is about to, so those measures haven't actually come into effect yet. They were just announced by the Cameron government a few months ago, and they're going to build on it, bu

Pay Equity committee  Right.

Pay Equity committee  Yes. Basically companies with 250 employees or more have to report out on what their salaries are, but I don't think there's any kind of penalty per se, in the sense that they're going to be fined or anything like that. It's a way for them to see if there is a gap within their ow

Pay Equity committee  In terms of the example I gave with Gap Inc., the approach that we take and that we counsel them on is about solving all the gaps you have. Once you do that, when you build an inclusive environment, you are going to end up closing your wage gap. Having more women in leadership, e

Pay Equity committee  Thank you, Madam Chairperson and committee members, for the opportunity to provide input on such an important issue. I'm Serena Fong, vice-president of government affairs. It is a distinct honour for me to be here representing Catalyst. Our goal as a non-profit organization is