Does Justin Trudeau hate men?

As everyone knows, it is illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of gender.

No one is allowed to pay men and women differently for doing the same or similar jobs. “Pay equity is a fundamental human right” a federal government website loudly proclaims.

So why is Ottawa breaking its own law and solemn commitment to human rights?

Earlier this year, the Trudeau government announced a new work-placement strategy for higher education. The goal is to expand on the success of various co-op opportunities for university and college students.

The federal government’s new program offers employers subsidies covering up to 50 per cent of a student’s wages, to a maximum of $5,000 per student, for eligible co-op positions.

But the plan doesn’t treat all students equally. Students from certain “under-represented” areas are eligible for much larger subsidies. For example, female applicants in areas related to science, technology, engineering and math — the so-called STEM subjects — will earn their employer a maximum $7,000 bonus, amounting to 70 per cent of their salary.

Similar bonuses will be awarded to Indigenous students, as well as immigrants and people with disabilities.

In other words, our self-declared “feminist government” in Ottawa plans to pay male co-op students in STEM nearly 30 per cent less than female students for doing exactly the same work.

How does that align with everyone’s fundamental human rights?

OK, you might say. The co-op students’ take-home pay won’t actually vary by gender. The employer is required by law to pay male and female students the exact same rate, regardless of government subsidy.

True, but the real cost to these businesses will vary substantially based on the sex of the students they hire. And let’s be clear: the whole point of this exercise is to get employers to actively discriminate on the basis of gender so as to hire more female co-op students at the expense of their male counterparts.

OK, you might say again. The Charter of Rights explicitly permits this sort of discrimination if it is designed for the “amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups” including race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

True again. Ottawa can claim it is acting on evidence that women are disadvantaged when it comes to job opportunities in STEM, since they account for about a quarter of all STEM jobs. Given that gender equity demands we move to a 50/50 balance in this field, variances in co-op subsidies are simply one way to achieve greater justice in the job market.

The trouble with this line of thinking is that it fails on the simple requirement of equivalence. If gender balance is truly important, it ought to work both ways.

And when it comes to the broad topic of higher education, the evidence is very clear that the group most in need of amelioration is not women, but men.

In Canada, women comprise 58 per cent of all post-secondary graduates. Surely this alone is evidence of a substantial gender imbalance in need of correction.

While women are under-represented in STEM subjects, they are overrepresented in almost all other areas of study.

This is the case in Canada and across the developed world. According to a recent OECD report, 34 per cent of women in wealthy countries have a university or college education, compared to 30 per cent for men.

To its credit, the OECD draws attention to the flaws inherent in gender-based education policies. “Analysis of gender segregation in educational choices and labour market outcomes often focuses on women’s underrepresentation in STEM professions. Sadly though, skewed gender ratios are also pertinent in the fields of health and education, where it is men who are in a minority,” the report states.

STEM, health and education are all wellpaid fields with high social standing. So why is gender balance a priority in only one of these important areas?

The University of Waterloo was recently bragging about the fact 30 per cent of its first year engineering students are now female. This has been accomplished through the determined application of female-only scholarships, special support programs and many other inducements that discriminate on the basis of gender to attract more girls to science.

Across campus, however, many UW programs are just as unbalanced in the opposite direction. Health Studies is 21 per cent male. Life Sciences, 18 per cent male. Optometry, 32 per cent male. Yet no programs or scholarships or leadership commitments exist to rectify any of these imbalances.

Women now constitute a clear majority of medical doctors under the age of 40 in Canada, and based on countrywide enrolment figures, this trend will grow stronger with time. Eventually the gender gap in health will match the already massive gender gap in education, where kids can go their entire elementary school career without ever having a male teacher.

If STEM ratios are a big national problem, surely unbalanced gender ratios in health and education must qualify as similarly urgent issues requiring federal attention.

Governments and schools that are truly committed to gender equity should be tackling the underrepresentation of men in health and education with the same verve and energy as they do the underrepresentation of women in STEM.

But they don’t. Why? Do they hate men?