Ensuring pay equity is a very important step towards achieving gender equality. The House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women (the Committee) carried out a study between 8 December 2020 and 25 February 2021 on the implementation of the Pay Equity Act (the Act) and the status of pay equity in federally regulated workplaces.

According to witnesses who appeared before the Committee, in Canada, women earn on average 0.89$ for every dollar earned by men. The most recent federal pay equity initiative is the Pay Equity Act of 2018. This Act is in the process of being implemented. With the coming into force of this Act, the current complaint-based approach to pay equity would be replaced with a proactive model that places the responsibility of addressing pay equity on the employer. This Act applies to federally regulated employers and will come into force later in 2021 once the accompanying regulations that were pre-published in November 2020 are finalized. Once the Act comes into force, employers will have three to five years to implement pay equity plans in their workplaces.

The Committee heard about the implementation of the Act from the Minister of Labour, as well as from the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s Pay Equity Commissioner. The Parliamentary Budget Officer provided an analysis of the cost for employers to implement the Act’s measures and the cost for the federal government to oversee and administer the new pay equity regime. Witnesses emphasized the importance of supporting employers in properly implementing the Act, as well as the added challenges brought by the COVID‑19 pandemic in implementing the Act.