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Hon. Joan Fraser:

Honourable senators, the economic plan that the government presented to Parliament is rather like the curate's egg — it has some good parts and some bad parts. Lord knows we need the good parts or even the semi-good parts, namely the stimulus package. Canadians, like residents of too many countries, are facing terrible economic times and need economic stimulus. This package is not perfect, as Senator Atkins has ably demonstrated for us and I would commend to your attention his remarks about the Employment Insurance system. Nonetheless, this stimulus package is the one on offer and it is important. Canadians need it, and that is the good or the pretty good part of the budget.

However, tucked into the budget implementation bill we find all these other things, very few of which are good and many of which are not good — everything from national securities regulators to navigable waters. There is a long list of areas that should not be in a budget implementation bill and legislative proposals that should not see the light of day in this bill or in any other bill, in my view.

However, perhaps the worst of these items is the iniquitous proposal on pay equity for women employees of the federal government. I think it is the worst of the lot because this proposal undermines women's rights; that is to say, it undermines human rights, because, honourable senators, women's rights are human rights. That matter has been settled; it is not open for argument. It has been affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada; it has been affirmed under international law; and it is no longer a subject for debate. That is why, until now, pay equity in the Canadian federal service has come under the Canadian Human Rights Act.

I am not arguing that the present system is perfect; no one could. It has grave flaws and, as has often been observed, it has tended to bog down many legitimate complaints in more than decade-long procedural wrangling before the courts. For example, there have been endless arguments over whether airline pilots and airline flight attendants work in the same establishment. One would think that subject ought not to be worth a ten-year court battle, but it was.

I do not suggest that the present system is perfect, but rather than improving a structure that was damaged, the government's proposal beats the whole pay equity system into rubble. There will be precious little left of it.

The portion of the budget implementation bill beginning on page 362 entitled, wrongly, "Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act," removes pay equity from the Canadian Human Rights Act and gives jurisdiction over it to the Public Service Labour Relations Board and makes pay equity a matter of collective bargaining. Collective bargaining is not an appropriate vehicle for pay equity disputes.

I quote, for example, from a letter written to Prime Minister Harper by a long list of eminent Canadians: 10 recipients of the Governor General's Persons award, 42 law professors and 25 other lawyers, professors, scholars and eminent Canadians.

They said:

The effect of this restructuring of the process for obtaining pay equity is to make pay equity no longer a human right of women, but a benefit or privilege which may be bargained successfully, or not.

It makes pay equity subject to collective bargaining in the same way that, as somebody said, tea breaks are. This is not an appropriate way to handle matters of human rights.

I draw the attention of honourable senators to the fact that it is under existing collective agreements that pay equity discrepancies, apparent gaps, have so often occurred, and this situation occurs because collective agreements are the product of the people who negotiate them, and they tend to reflect traditional gender biases and stereotypes about what different jobs are worth. Therefore, it is a highly perilous enterprise to turn this subject over to the collective bargaining process. In addition, this proposed legislation changes the criteria to be applied in assessing the value of work done by employees. It now says that those criteria shall include:

(b) the employer's recruitment and retention needs . . . taking into account the qualifications required to perform the work and the market forces operating in respect of employees with those qualifications;

In other words, criteria shall take into account market forces that have already decided that a given class of work performed by women is not worth as much as a different class of work performed by men. Those market forces will now be included in the criteria to determine whether there is a pay equity case to be resolved. This proposed change is, at best, circular reasoning and a circular approach.

I will quote again from the letter of the experts I referred to earlier:

This permits any evaluation to take into account that male-dominated jobs are valued more highly in the market, requiring the employer to pay more to attract new employees or retain current ones, even if the value of the work when it is assessed based on skill, effort and responsibility is no greater than that of female-dominated jobs.

Of course, women will retain the right to complain. A woman who wants to complain can go and complain, all by herself, to the Public Service Labour Relations Board, but she will be all by herself. Her union will be prohibited, by law, from assisting her. Her union will be subject to a $50,000 fine if it assists her in preparing her complaint to the Public Service Labour Relations Board.

Under the present system, imperfect as it may be, if a person complains to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, it will then do the necessary investigation for that person. The woman who makes the complaint does not have to carry the immense administrative and financial burden of trying to ascertain the fine points of her employer's administrative policies. That will not be the case any more either; she will be on her own.

I could go on. So many elements in this bill are scandalous. For example, because the proportion of employees who must be of a given sex to qualify under the pay equity rules is bumped up to 70 per cent, thousands of women will now be excluded from the ability to seek pay equity restitution. That is just wrong. It is absolutely scandalous. It is a scandalous suppression of human rights, and it is not, despite the best efforts of the government to portray it as such, proactive within any meaning of that phrase. Proactive pay equity legislation does exist in this country. It exists, as the government reminds us, in Ontario, Manitoba and Quebec. However, we do not have that kind of proactive legislation here.

The federal task force on pay equity recommended a few years ago that we follow the model of Ontario and Manitoba, which would include, among other things, the establishment of a new specialized pay equity commission and tribunal to handle pay equity questions. A commission and tribunal would be a good thing in order to simplify the difficulties of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. However, we are not getting that. We are getting the Public Service Labour Relations Board, which has no expertise, no jurisprudence, as I was reminded today, and already has too much to do, I am sure.

Neither are we getting what exists in Quebec, which is a specific legal regime obliging employers to follow certain steps, to adopt pay equity, to have pay equity committees, and to have pay equity systems in place. That regime has been extremely successful, and employers are happy with it because they have found that, among other things, it has improved productivity in the workplace. We are not getting any of that. The government likes the word "proactive" but it does not want to do anything that might be proactive.

Now comes the real dilemma. We return to the fact that this iniquitous piece of legislation is contained within a broader bill that provides desperately needed economic stimulus for the citizens of this country, and it is women who, as a class, are the most vulnerable in the economic crisis in which we are now living. Women are the ones most likely to be working part-time, to be working in service industries, and to be working in low-paying and marginal jobs. Women are the ones who are most likely to be let go as an economic crisis bites.

Therefore, although thousands of Canadians need this bill, arguably, women are the ones who need it more than anyone else and stand to benefit most from it.

An analysis provided by the economic consulting firm Informetrica noted that the direct effect of this bill, which is to boost spending on construction and similar things, is to increase the employment of men more than women because more men are construction workers. However, the indirect effect is different. Informetrica states:

. . . if one includes indirect and induced effects, and recognizes that there is a notably significant spending and tax effect on consumer service industries . . . there is both a proportionately and absolutely larger impact on female employment than on males. Our results do suggest that there will be a disproportionately large positive effect on those aged 54 and older for both sexes.

I note that older women often tend to be in worse economic straits than older men. Women need this package.

What this bill has done, what this government has done, is pit two classes of women against each other. It has pitted human rights against immediate, severe economic need. It is an appalling choice of policies.

Why are they doing this? I find it hard to believe they are doing it in order to be proactive. I think it is more significant to look at the actual book of Canada's Economic Action Plan where, on page 211, they say that they will be giving us this new pay equity regime. In what section of the plan is this announcement made?

Senator Corbin: They are not listening.

Senator Fraser: Of course they are not listening, but the people will.

The statement comes in the section of the economic plan headed "Strong Expenditure Management." They are doing it to save money. What an ignoble policy. What a scandalous, embarrassing policy for this government and this country to be saddled with. As I say, the women of Canada need the economic stimulus package, but Stephen Harper and his colleagues will carry this shame for a long time.

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