Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2017, published 107th ILC session (2018)

Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951 (No. 100) - Canada (Ratification: 1972)

The Committee notes the observations of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) and of the National Union Confederation (CSN), which were all received on 31 August 2015.

Article 2 of the Convention. Application of legislation in practice. The Committee recalls that Quebec has addressed issues of non-compliance by requiring employers to conduct pay equity audits every five years in order to assess if compensation adjustments are needed, and to report on their efforts, and in this connection it notes the information provided by CSN on low employer compliance with the law. The Committee notes the Government’s indication that evaluations of the employers’ reports, conducted by the Pay Equity Commission, revealed 80 per cent compliance with the Pay Equity Act in 2015. The Committee notes that the Pay Equity Office in Ontario continues to provide education and information services to stakeholders and continues to monitor female dominated sectors to ensure implementation and maintenance of pay equity. Noting the limited information provided in the Government’s report, the Committee asks the Government to provide more detailed information on the various measures and initiatives undertaken at the federal and provincial levels, in the public and private sectors, to promote in practice better understanding and implementation of the principle of equal pay for work of equal value as well as information on the wider measures taken to specifically address the gender pay gap.

Article 3. Objective job evaluation. The Committee notes the approval of the Classification Programme Renewal Initiative for enhancing the overall quality of the classification decision-making and for controlling costs, including the Policy on Classification, a Directive on Classification, A Directive on Classification Oversight and a Directive on Classification Grievances. The Committee also notes the concerns expressed by the PSAC in the development of this new classification system including the insistence on it being a cost-neutral exercise, the use of generic job descriptions, and the changes to the composition of some of the occupational groups without consultation with the PSAC resulting in it broadening salary gaps and posing greater challenges to pay equity. At the provincial level, the Committee notes the work of the New Brunswick government with the private sector to establish objective job evaluation and pay equity analysis to five targeted groups of child care, home support, transition homes, nursing homes and community residences. The Committee also notes the work undertaken in Newfoundland and Labrador on the gender neutral classification system of the public servants and for unionized positions, and the work of the Equal Pay Commission in Quebec on objective job evaluation and related training. The Committee asks the Government to provide information on the impact of the new federal classification of policy and directives on the gender wage gap and the promotion of pay equity. Please continue to provide examples of job evaluation measures undertaken at provincial levels and the results achieved.

Article 4. Cooperation with employers and workers’ organizations. The Committee asks the Government to provide information on any cooperation with workers and employers organizations for the purposes of giving effect to the implementation of the Convention and to forward copies of any collective agreements containing provisions on equal remuneration.

Enforcement. The Committee welcomes the detailed summary information provided by the Government on judicial and administrative decisions related to the principle of equal remuneration for work of equal value. It notes the enforcement activities of Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec and the education activities of the federal Labour Programme and the Quebec Commission on Equal Pay. The Committee notes the CSN’s indication that the Superior Court of Quebec in a decision of 22 January 2014 declared invalid certain provisions of the Pay Equity Act which prohibit retroactive salary adjustments following a pay equity exercise. According to the Act, salary adjustments apply only to the future. As the CSN indicates that this judgment has been appealed, the Committee asks for information on the final judgment. Please continue to provide information on the number and nature of complaints filed relating to equal remuneration, as well as relevant judicial and administrative decisions, from all the jurisdictions at federal and provincial levels. The Committee again asks the Government to provide information on any action taken to build the capacity of the responsible authorities, in particular labour inspectors and other relevant officials to assist them in identifying and addressing pay inequalities.

Practical application. Gender wage gap. The Committee notes from the Government’s report that the gender wage gap in the federal public service continues to decrease slightly from 2012 to 2014. It notes from the publication Women in Paid Employment published by Statistics Canada in 2017, that that the overall hourly wage gap between men and women across the country continues to reduce slowly and as of 2015 there remains approximately a 13 per cent difference. The report finds that gender-based pay inequality tends to diminish with increasing levels of education and women have sustained a long-term trend toward higher education. Yet women have not been able to educate themselves out of gender differences in pay entirely. Even when they had a university degree above the Bachelor’s level, women earned an average of $0.90 for every dollar earned by men in 2015. The report finds that the gender pay gap is owed partly to the differential allocation of female and male workers across occupations as women are over-represented in low-paying occupations and under-represented in high-paying ones. In 2015, women are more likely to have an occupation in the bottom 20 per cent of the wage distribution than they are in the top 20 per cent; the reverse is true for men. The report also finds that female-dominated occupations tend to be compensated at lower wage rates than male-dominated occupations – even when they involve the same skill level. Moreover, the report finds there to be significant wage inequality between women and men within occupations. The report also finds that women are more likely to work less hours then men thus lowering their yearly earnings. The Committee also notes the information provided by the CLC on the differences in the gender wage gap among the provinces, for example, in Alberta, where there is no pay equity legislation, women’s full-time yearly earnings are only 63 per cent of men’s, as compared to 75 per cent in Quebec and 74 per cent in Ontario. The Committee asks the Government to provide detailed statistical information, including reports containing recent analysis, on the wage and earning rates at the federal and provincial levels disaggregated by sex. Please also indicate how these statistics based findings are taken into account in the development of new laws, policies and other measures to reduce the gender pay gap and promote application of the Convention.