Committee has no terms of reference
Work guided by vague letter written in 2018
A committee struck in 2018 to look at pay equity in the province does not have any terms of reference guiding its work.
Saltwire Network asked the Office of Women and Gender Equality (WGE) for a copy of the Interdepartmental Pay Equity Committee’s terms of reference, but was provided with a letter that was sent in February 2018 by then-deputy minister of the Women’s Policy Office, Donna Ballard, to her colleagues in the Department of Justice and Public Safety and the Department of Advanced Education, Skills and Labour, and Human Resources Secretariat.
The letter sent to the Human Resources Secretariat reads in full:
“I am writing you today in my capacity as deputy minister for the Women’s Policy Office. The Human Resource Secretariat has a role to play in fully exploring the potential of pay equity in Newfoundland and Labrador and I am requesting your assistance to further examine this issue on an interdepartmental committee.
“Staff at the Women’s Policy Office have been collaborating with internal and external partners to explore various facets related to pay equity policies and legislation. Notably, this has included meetings with relevant stakeholders and the development of a jurisdictional scan on pay equity legislation in Canada by the Provincial Advisory Council on the Status of Women. However, at this time we feel that in order to best move forward we must bring together departmental staff to discuss the next steps for pay equity at this time.
“I request your assistance identifying relevant staff in your department to meet on this topic in the near future. Once those staff have been identified, the Women’s Policy Office will work to co-ordinate a meeting of all involved. Thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter.”
Saltwire Network confirmed with an Office of Women and Gender Equality spokesperson that there are no formal terms of reference guiding the committee’s work; the letter is the only such document.
A terms of reference document typically outlines for a committee its purpose, scope of work, authority, meeting protocols, resources available, reports due and so on.
An access request filed by Saltwire in May showed the committee went almost three years without a single meeting. Since the committee was struck in 2018, it has met for a total of seven-and-a-half hours. There were four meetings in 2018, one in 2019 and two this year.
Newfoundland and Labrador is the only Atlantic Canadian province without pay equity legislation. The others enacted legislation in the late 1980s.
In a July 20 interview, Minister Responsible for Women and Gender Equality Pam Parsons said she is very serious about the issue of pay equity, but she did not give any indication of a timeline of when women and genderdiverse people in the province can expect legislation.
“Clearly, if this was something that can be done in the flick of a switch, (it) probably would have been done in the 1980s when it was first brought to the legislature here in the province,” Parsons said.
Finance Minister Siobhan Coady and Environment and Climate Change Minister Bernard Davis have authority to table pay
“Clearly, if this was something that can be done in the flick of a switch, (it) probably would have been done in the 1980s when it was first brought to the legislature here in the province.” Pam Parsons
equity legislation in the public and private sector, respectively.
Saltwire requested interviews with both Coady and Davis for sometime this week to get an update on any progress on pay equity. An interview time is yet to be confirmed by department spokespeople.