Public Safety committee  To start I'd like to provide a context piece to this legislation by looking at the overall labour relations framework for the Government of Canada. The RCMP, our national police, are part of the federal framework of the labour relations system. One of the big issues for a labour relations regime when it is in the public sector is the public interest.

Public Safety committee  I have two points to make. If there is a right to strike, most of the services would be declared essential. Ultimately and practically, there would be no right to strike either. Our experience in the latest bargaining rounds shows the following. Since there is also binding arbitration in the core public administration service, the changes are about 0.25%.

Pay Equity committee  I think simplicity is best when it can be achieved. Part of the complaint process is that it takes time, it takes money, and it's a complex process. If in the end it's something that is simpler, I think it would make progress.

Pay Equity committee  I think that question has to be looked at in detail. If there are three of us, it's because the three of us have a policy role to some extent. I'd say that the Department of Justice probably would want to have a say from a charter perspective as well. It's not as clear-cut as it looks.

Pay Equity committee  It is a very complex area.

Pay Equity committee  It's a very complicated calculation to make. As you mentioned earlier, depending on how you define the groups, how you define the comparator, and whether or not you choose to go to the lowest male-predominant comparator, you'll have very different answers to that. It's driven by a number of policy choices.

Pay Equity committee  Pay equity and wage gap are related but they are not the same thing. With pay equity in the government the idea is that if, after doing the SERWC, a job's value is 600 points and another one is 600 points, then it's the same pay. The wage gap is different because you take all the women doing all sorts of work—part time, full time, all of that—and find hourly rate x.

Pay Equity committee  I'd say just about everything is contentious.

Pay Equity committee  It's a complaint-based process. First you have to identify the group. What's the female-predominant group you are talking about? It can be a long discussion. Then where are the male comparators? Another long discussion about that. Then how do you value? So that's the SERWC. That's why sometimes we go to court and we have experts, two experts, three opinions.

Pay Equity committee  I'm not sure I can answer your question on an enforcement mechanism directly. I want to make a point on the question of my LP, my lawyers from earlier. There'll be a lot of debate on the job description itself. Am I an LP-1 or an LP-2? Never mind pay equity; it's just compensation at that point and where I fit on the scale.

Pay Equity committee  I think it has to do with wanting to look at the policy underpinning of this.

Pay Equity committee  I'm not sure it needed regulations. The regulations are not adopted, so there are not transitional rules per se.

Pay Equity committee  We don't have an international comparator at the moment, and it's probably something that would be good to consider as the committee looks at this question in the next few weeks and months.

Pay Equity committee  If I take it from a public service employee perspective, what we have is.... We negotiate with the lawyers. Any groups we have are represented, and we collectively bargain for pay ranges. When I was a lawyer in the government, there used to be LAs: LA-1, LA-2, LA-3, and LA-4. They are now called LPs: LP-1, LP-2, LP-3, and LP-4.

Pay Equity committee  I'll echo what my colleague said. Certainly, the Bilson report would be a good starting point. Twelve years later, we know that some provincial jurisdictions have taken parts of that work in looking to establish their own legislation. It would probably be something to go and consult with in order to see how their legislation was built—what was their experience, what are their lessons learned, what they would do again, and what they would not do—to see how much of that is transferable to our experience and then maybe come up with something a bit new and different.