FEWO Committee Report

SUPPLEMENTARY OPINION NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF CANADA

Fair pay means that the work women and men do is equally respected and valued. Unfortunately, this is not the reality for many workers in Canada, where there is still a large gap between what women and men earn. This issue also isn’t new, and it hasn’t been a secret; successive Canadian governments have studied the issue, set up task forces, and commissions and have made declarations talking about the importance of pay equity, yet it still remains unavailable to Canadians today.

Starting in 1948, the Canadian government signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that enshrined the right to equal pay of equal value. Article 23 of the Declaration proclaimed that: Everyone, without discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work".

The Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada was created in 1967 and given the mandate to "inquire into and report upon the status of women in Canada, and to recommend what steps might be taken by the federal government to ensure equal opportunities for women in all aspects of the Canadian society. One of those recommendations was for pay equity legislation in Canada to cover all workplaces.

In 1977, the Canadian Human Rights Act, which applies to federally regulated employers, was enacted. Section 11(1) of the Act states: "It is a discriminatory practice for an employer to establish or maintain differences in wages between male and female employees employed in the same establishment who are performing work of equal value." This complaint-based system that is still in place today has failed to address the systematic discrimination in workplaces. Also, it requires those with less resources to take on larger systems and power structures, which results in women being discouraged from coming forward.

Even with the Human Rights Act and other policies in place, employers can still get away with continuing to pay women less by hiding unequal pay in different job titles, benefits or bonuses. Slight differences in duties could mean big differences in wages, especially for jobs normally held by men. We know too, that women are often streamed toward jobs considered “women’s work”.

In 2004, another Liberal government launched another task force to investigate the issue of pay equity. The Pay Equity Task Force made a number of recommendations to address the gender wage gap in Canada. Their report also recognized that wage discrimination exists for people with disabilities, Aboriginal workers, and racialized workers. The Liberal government of the day and the Harper government failed to act on these recommendations and women were forced to continue to wait.

In 2018, the Liberal government introduced Bill C-86 Budget Implementation Act. Within the record-setting 850-page omnibus legislation, the government placed the Pay Equity Act. The legislation requires employers to take proactive measures to ensure they provide equal pay for equal work. It includes providing compensation to female workers to bring their pay up to those of their male counterparts.

New Democrats have long been calling for pay equity legislation and while we were glad to see movement, this bill still had many flaws. If the act had been tabled as a stand-alone bill, opposition parties could have proposed amendments to make it stronger, faster and more effective for workers. Sadly, the members of the Standing Committee on Finance only had nine seconds to examine each section of the bill on average and it was therefore impossible to hear testimony to investigate the core issues in the Pay Equity Act.

The 2018 Budget Implementation Act also failed to allocate the resources and investments needed to do anything other than put titles on these bills. It was clear the Liberal government wanted to make it look like they were doing something before the 2019 election but, didn’t take any real or substantive action. Even with the Pay Equity Act being given royal assent, the Liberal government continued to drag its feet in the publishing of regulations and the implementation of the act.

Despite this delay in implementation, the federal Minister of Labour announced in November 2020 the publication of the proposed Pay Equity Regulations in the Canada Gazette, Part I. The Regulations, which are required in order to support the implementation of the Act. The Liberal government also extended comment period to January 13, 2021. These regulations will be finalized when they are published in the Canada Gazette, Part II however that still hasn’t happened as of the publishing of this report.

At the Standing Committee’s December 8^th, 2020 meeting the Parliamentary Budget Officer was asked why he thought it was taking the government so long to bring forward regulations.

Mr. Yves Giroux’s answer:

    Madam Chair, while I am no expert on pay equity and the implementation of the pay equity regime, I know a thing or two about government workings and regulation-making. It was the government's own legislation, so they knew this was coming. I'm convinced they could have drafted and implemented regulations more quickly and had an earlier coming into force.

The Pay Equity Act offers incredibly generous timelines of three years for employers to develop a pay equity plan and an additional three to five years to implement said plans, depending on the size of the organization. In other words, some women might have to wait until 2029 to see this pay equity legislation come into full force, more than a decade since the legislation was first passed.

In the PBO’s report, it was noted that that in some instances, women saw a wage gap of $3 per hour. Over the course of a year, or a worker’s lifetime, this would have significant impacts immediately as well as for future benefits. When asked about this, Parliamentary Budget Officer Mr. Yves Giroux said:

    That is totally accurate. If somebody is earning $3 an hour less than they otherwise would have earned, it has an impact of about $6,000 per year, and over the span of their career it can easily get into the tens of thousands of dollars.

It also has an implication for the retirement pension of that individual through either the QPP or CPP or an employer-based pension plan, because those are nearly always based on career earnings. The lower your earnings, the lower your CPP/QPP benefits are when you retire, and the lower your pension is as well.

With the long delays in implantation of the 2018 Pay Equity Act there will be direct impacts on women now and in the future. The Canadian Postmasters and Assistants Association (CPAA) has a membership of over 8,000 officers who work at rural post offices and they first filed a pay equity complaint in 1992, twenty-nine years ago. In May 2019, the CPAA signed its pay equity settlement with the Canada Post Corporation. Many of their members said they never thought they would live to see the end of this dispute. But sadly, the settlement amount in some cases are being paid out to their members' estates, as those members have died since the complaint was first filed.

The Canada Post Corporation has been through several prolonged pay equity disputes within various employee units, including another court battle with female clerks that lasted for 25 years and cost millions of dollars. It is clear, the old pay equity system doesn’t work, however we need to make sure not to continue to delay a new system from being fully implemented.

New Democrats believe that gender equity is a fundamental value and right, and we’re committed to building a Canada where no one is left behind. New Democrats will prioritize pay equity to put an end to gender-based wage discrimination, no more waiting, no more delays. The governments needs to require employers to be transparent about pay, and implement and enforce tough and pro-active pay equity regulations immediately.