Toronto Star

Be proactive on pay equity, Liberal memo advises

- JOANNA SMITH AND JORDAN PRESS THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA— The federal government would prefer a proactive approach to ensuring that men and women get equal pay for work of equal value, a newly released memo suggests, but officials expressed some caution over how much it could accomplish.

“The proactive approach is generally considered to be more effective at addressing systemic wage discrimina­tion,” said a background­er on pay equity legislatio­n provided to Labour Minister MaryAnn Mihychuk on Feb. 1.

“It is less adversaria­l than a complaints-based approach, with the focus being on assisting employers to comply with the law rather than placing the burden on a complainan­t to build a case of discrimina­tion,” said the memo from the deputy minister.

“However, a proactive approach can only bring about minor change unless compliance levels are high.”

The Canadian Press obtained the document through access to informatio­n legislatio­n.

The document was prepared ahead of an NDP motion that called on the House of Commons to strike a special committee on pay equity to come up with a plan to adopt a proactive pay equity regime, rather than leaving individual women who believe they are being treated unfairly to file complaints.

The motion passed with support from the Liberals and the committee released its report in June.

The report recommende­d doing away with the controvers­ial Public Sector Equitable Compensati­on Act brought in by the previous Conservati­ve government.

It also called on the government to draft proactive pay equity legislatio­n within 18 months — with the NDP asking for it by the end of this year.

It also urged the government to accept the overall direction — and majority of recommenda­tions — from the 2004 report of the federal Pay Equity Task Force. Neither Mihychuk nor anyone from the Department of Employment and Social Developmen­t was available Monday for an interview.

In an emailed statement, department­al spokesman Josh Bueckert pointed to what the minister said during her May 3 appearance before the committee: “Our government’s goal is to stop this discrimina­tion related to the undervalua­tion of work traditiona­lly performed by women.”

As for how it plans to do that, the statement said the government will table a comprehens­ive response to the committee report by Oct. 7.

The briefing note mentions that employers can be taken to task by the Canadian Human Rights Commission without employees or their unions having to file a complaint.

“If an inspector has reasonable grounds to believe that there is gender-based wage discrimina­tion in an establishm­ent, he or she may notify the commission, which can then initiate an investigat­ion. However, there are no known cases of this occurring,” it said. New Democrat MP Sheila Malcolmson, who put forward the motion on pay equity, said she hopes the Liberals follow through. “This is a policy that they can bring in which actually puts some action to their words on gender equality,” said Malcolmson, a status of women critic.

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