Provincial government under fire for lack of pay equity law

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B.C. has the worst gender pay gap in Canada and, on International Women’s Day, the B.C. Liberals blasted the NDP government for refusing to bring in pay-equity legislation which it said would close that gap.

Liberal MLA Stephanie Cadieux is pushing for the government to debate her private member’s bill, which would require businesses that employ more than 50 people to disclose a breakdown of salaries and bonuses paid to all employees in order to identify gender disparities.

Cadieux has tabled the Equal Pay Reporting Act 2020 three times, but it has yet to be called by the government for debate.

Without the legislation, Cadieux said the pay structure and bonuses at large companies will remain opaque.

“If we don’t know (the extent of pay inequity) and we’re not looking for it, we can’t fix it,” she said.

B.C. is one of only four provinces without pay-equity legislation, which Raji Mangat, executive director for West Coast Legal Education and Action Fund, said is one of the reasons B.C. has a larger gender pay gap than other jurisdictions.

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Women in B.C. make an average of 18.6 per cent less than men, which is equivalent to $5.90 an hour, according to Statistics Canada from 2018, the most recent figures available. Women earn on average 12.2 less in Ontario and 10 per cent less in Quebec.

Mangat said Ontario passed pro-active pay-equity legislation in 1988, and updated it in 1993. The Pay Equity Act requires public and private sector employers with 10 or more employees to prepare pay-equity plans. Mangat said the smaller pay gap in Ontario makes it clear that women and gender-diverse people in that province have benefitted from the legislation.

B.C.’s Human Rights Code prevents any form of discrimination based on gender identity and expression, but many people are unwilling to bring a human rights complaint against their employers for fear of reprisal, Mangat said. “In the absence of any legislation, we’re not seeing movement on this issue (in B.C.)”

She added that reform to address pay inequity is especially urgent given that the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately hit women and people of marginalized genders.

A November report by the Royal Bank of Canada found that more than 20,000 women left the workforce between ­February and October, while about 68,000 men joined it. The report found that many women left the workforce to care for children during the pandemic while men picked up jobs in the science, technology, engineering and math sectors.

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Finance Minister Selina Robinson told reporters Monday that the government has made major investments in child care, which is the key piece that allows women to participate in the workforce. The province also increased the minimum wage to $14.60 an hour last year, Robinson said.

Robinson said the private member’s bill won’t address the pay-equity gap, since 98 per cent of businesses have fewer than 50 employees.

The mandate letter for Grace Lore, MLA for Victoria-Beacon Hill and B.C.’s parliamentary secretary for gender equity, calls on her to work with the minister of labour to introduce pay transparency legislation to close the gender pay gap and address systemic discrimination in the workplace.

“We’re continuing to look at policies we can put in place to make sure women have equal opportunities,” Robinson said. “There’s absolutely more for us to do, and we’re going to keep doing it until we actually have pay equity.”

kderosa@postmedia.com

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