GENDER-BASED PAY EQUITY TO COST CANADIAN TAXPAYERS $621 MILLION.

Government mum on cost of new program

OTTAWA • A new report offers the first-ever cost estimate for a Liberal policy that aims to ensure men and women receive equal pay, after Ottawa declined to provide details on the legislation in 2018.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates that the Liberal government’s equal pay policy will cost taxpayers $621 million per year, covering about 390,000 public servants in Canada.

That estimate does not include the additional 900,000 workers who fall under federally regulated industries like airlines, telecoms, banking, and broadcasting.

Crown corporations including Canada Post, Bank of Canada and the newly formed Trans Mountain Corp. will also fall under the new equal-pay provisions. The $621-million hike amounts to a roughly one per cent increase on the $45 billion Ottawa spends every year on wages and pensions for public employees.

Yves Giroux, the PBO, said his office pulled together the estimates without the help of Treasury Board officials, who declined to provide any internal data for the program, citing cabinet confidence.

He said he was unsure of the merit of those claims, but warned that the Liberal government should avoid using cabinet confidence as a catch-all to withhold information that would be useful to the public.

“If the data exists, and it’s been used internally or in other formats, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it should remain a secret just because it was discussed at cabinet,” Giroux said in an interview.

Spokespeople for Treasury minister Jean-Yves Duclos did not respond to questions about why it declined to provide cost estimates on the program. “It’s probably bureaucrats being overly risk-averse,” Giroux said. “But there’s no way for me to be sure of that, because we haven’t seen the data.”

His comments come as the PBO on Wednesday issued a second report that lamented a broader lack of transparency by the federal government on its immense COVID-19 emergency spending measures.

It pointed out that the government has yet to lay out detailed accounts of the spending measures thus far for COVID-19, unlike past stimulus spending, and with little excuse for the secrecy. The government’s latest spending request to Parliament, for $79 billion, has likewise been “lacking” in detail, the budget officer said.

“This lack of data is not a result of it not being available,” the PBO report said. “The Department of Finance had been providing biweekly updates to the standing committee on finance, but stopped when Parliament was prorogued in August.”

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has repeatedly called for better transparency in government spending during the pandemic, as policy-makers in Ottawa rush hundreds of billions out the door in an effort to provide a lifeline to Canadian businesses and workers hit by economic lockdowns.

A lack of detail around the gender parity program is the latest example of these shortcomings, the budget watchdog said Wednesday.

The Pay Equity Act was ultimately tucked inside the Liberal government’s 2018 omnibus budget bill, which passed the House of Commons on a 163-113 vote in late December, with most opposition parties voting against. It received royal assent without associated costs ever being supplied by government.

The changes seek to achieve pay equity by“re dressing the systemic gender-based discrimination” faced by women, the legislation says. Employers under the new regime must “calculate the compensation, expressed in dollars per hour, associated with each job class,” and pay employees a set amount according to the value ascribed to those classes.

The new legislation also calls for the appointment of a “pay equity commissioner” to audit public sector pay, resolve pay disputes, and impose financial penalties on agencies and corporations that fail to meet the new guidelines.

Various studies have claimed that women tend to receive only a portion of the wages of men occupying the same roles, prompting calls from advocacy groups for regulations that would enforce gender parity.

Of the $621 million in higher pay associated with the changes, the PBO estimates that by 2023-24, $477 million more would go toward wages while the remaining $144 million would go toward public pensions.

Ongoing costs for regulatory oversight of the program is expected to be $5 million per year. Administrative costs will be $9 million annually, according to the PBO report.

IT DOESN'T NECESSARILY MEAN THAT IT SHOULD REMAIN A SECRET JUST BECAUSE IT WAS DISCUSSED AT CABINET.