Legislative Assembly of Ontario

PAY EQUITY AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR L'ÉQUITÉ SALARIALE PUBLIC SERVICE
STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT DES LOIS EN CE QUI CONCERNE LA FONCTION PUBLIQUE

MINISTRY OF LABOUR
MANAGEMENT BOARD OF CABINET

CONTENTS

Monday 1 February 1993

Pay Equity Amendment Act, 1993, Bill 102

Public Service Statute Law Amendment Act, 1993, Bill 169

Ministry of Labour; Management Board of Cabinet

James R. Thomas, Deputy Minister of Labour

Kathy Bouey, assistant deputy minister, Management Board of Cabinet

Barbara Sulzenko, policy adviser, broader public sector, labour relations secretariat, Management Board of Cabinet

Catherine Evans, policy advisor, rights and legislation, Ministry of Labour

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

*Chair / Président: Cooper, Mike (Kitchener-Wilmot ND)

*Acting Chair / Présidente suppléante: Mathyssen, Irene (Middlesex ND)

Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Morrow, Mark (Wentworth East/-Est ND)

*Akande, Zanana L. (St Andrew-St Patrick ND)

Carter, Jenny (Peterborough ND)

Chiarelli, Robert (Ottawa West/-Ouest L)

*Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North/-Nord L)

Harnick, Charles (Willowdale PC)

Mahoney, Steven W. (Mississauga West/-Ouest L)

*Malkowski, Gary (York East/-Est ND)

Runciman, Robert W. (Leeds-Grenville PC)

Wessenger, Paul (Simcoe Centre ND)

Winninger, David (London South/-Sud ND)

*In attendance / présents

Substitutions present / Membres remplaçants présents:

Arnott, Ted (Wellington PC) for Mr Runciman

Caplan, Elinor (Oriole L) for Mr Chiarelli

Jackson, Cameron (Burlington South/-Sud PC) for Mr Harnick

Lessard, Wayne (Windsor-Walkerville ND) for Mr Morrow

Mathyssen, Irene (Middlesex ND) for Ms Carter

Murdock, Sharon (Sudbury ND) for Mr Wessenger

Poole, Dianne (Eglinton L) for Mr Mahoney

Wiseman, Jim (Durham West/-Ouest ND) for Mr Winninger

Clerk / Greffière: Freedman, Lisa

Staff / Personnel: Hopkins, Laura, legislative counsel

The committee met at 1352 in room 228.

PAY EQUITY AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR L'ÉQUITÉ SALARIALE PUBLIC SERVICE
STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT DES LOIS EN CE QUI CONCERNE LA FONCTION PUBLIQUE

Consideration of Bill 102, An Act to amend the Pay Equity Act / Loi modifiant la Loi sur l'équité salariale, and Bill 169, An Act to amend the Public Service Act and the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act / Loi modifiant la Loi sur la fonction publique et la Loi sur la négociation collective des employés de la Couronne.

The Chair (Mr Mike Cooper): I'd like to call this meeting of the standing committee on administration of justice to order. Today we'll be continuing with Bill 102, An Act to amend the Pay Equity Act, and Bill 169, An Act to amend the Public Service Act and the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act. This afternoon we will be handling technical questions from the two ministries.

MINISTRY OF LABOUR
MANAGEMENT BOARD OF CABINET

The Chair: We have with us, from the Ministry of Labour, Ms Catherine Evans and Mr James Thomas, the deputy minister; and Ms Kathy Bouey, assistant deputy minister, and Barbara Sulzenko. Welcome back. Before we get started, I believe we have a motion from Mr Arnott.

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): Thank you, Mr Chairman. I wish to move the following motion. The committee members, I believe, have a copy of it, and it's somewhat amended. I'll read it as follows:

Would the Treasurer and Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet provide the committee members with the following information:

(1) The annual pay equity adjustment costs for the Ontario public service for the years 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993;

(2) The projected annual pay equity adjustment costs for the Ontario public service for the years 1994 to 1998;

(3) The company name and total amount paid for any consulting services that the government acquired to assist with the development of pay equity plans for the Ontario public service;

(4) The annual pay equity adjustment costs for the broader public sector, with a breakdown for school boards, hospitals, municipalities and colleges and universities, for the years 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993;

(5) The exact dollar amounts transferred from the provincial government to school boards, hospitals, municipalities and colleges and universities to assist the broader public sector with pay equity adjustments;

(6) The projected annual pay equity adjustment costs for the broader public sector, with a breakdown for school boards, hospitals, municipalities and colleges and universities, for the years 1994 to 1998;

(7) The estimated pay equity adjustment costs for private sector employers with 500 or more employees for 1991, 1992, and 1993;

(8) The estimated pay equity adjustment costs for private sector employers with 100 to 499 employees for 1992 and 1993.

Thank you, Mr Chairman.

The Chair: Thank you. Questions or comments?

Ms Dianne Poole (Eglinton): I appreciate the fact that Mr Arnott has brought forward a number of these questions. In fact, he has made official the request for information I was going to make today. My question for representatives from the Ministry of Labour is, recognizing the fact that Management Board and Treasury are not represented here, how soon can you realistically get us these data? Second, are some of these data unavailable? For instance, number 8 refers to private sector employers, and I wonder if the ministry would even have these kinds of data available.

Mr James R. Thomas: First of all, there are people here from Management Board who may be able to assist with the answer to the question of how long it will take. I would think it will require some efforts on the part of several ministries, not just Treasury and Management Board of Cabinet. I would think that the Ministry of Labour would have some of the information, particularly as it pertains to items 7 and 8, Ms Poole. I think I'm going to have to get back to you in the next day, if I could, on how long it might take to do it, because I just don't know whether that information is readily available. But perhaps my colleagues would like to comment on the first six points.

Ms Kathy Bouey: I think Jim has summarized the situation. I think we can probably identify, with a bit of digging, the historical pattern of the OPS costs and certainly what might have happened in terms of consulting services. I'm not in a position to know what would be involved in terms of getting the breakdown for questions 4 through 6. We would have to check with Treasury on that. In part, it's an issue that some of these costs are not knowable until the pay equity plan has been filed and Treasury has surveyed the various ministries and the ministries have surveyed their organizations to see what is actually required.

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): Supplementary to that, I understand Ms Poole's difficulty with this motion, because certain assumptions were made originally, and it's my understanding from the testimony before this committee that the assumptions have been fairly accurate. I'm referring to the assumption of 4% to 5% of total payroll. It's my understanding, if you could confirm it, that for most of the plans that have come in within the public sector and broader public sector, where they have already completed a plan, those original assumptions of 4% to 5% of payroll have proven the norm.

Mr Thomas: We can answer that, Ms Caplan. I think the figures we have would say that it has been 4% to 5% or less. We did come prepared to talk to you in general terms, if you're interested, about how the expenditures were forecast, which is a more general answer perhaps than some of the questions, but if you'd like to pursue the issue of costs, we could do some of that this afternoon.

Mrs Caplan: The difficulty with this PC motion is that it asks for exact dollar amounts and that sort of thing, which I think would be difficult to document because so many of those in the broader public sector have not completed their plans; whereas what I've heard you say is that for those who have completed plans the assumption of 4% to 5% of payroll has been the experience or, as you've added, less than that, not more. So the actual cost is what was expected at the time the legislation was passed, but it's very hard to document on an exact dollar basis. Is that --

Mr Thomas: That's right. My further recollection, Ms Caplan, is that I was involved in the negotiation of the government's pay equity plan with OPSEU. My recollection is that that was a plan that ran at about 3.5% of payroll. I think that when you talk 4% to 5%, you're in the ballpark; you may be in the upper end of the ballpark. We are certainly prepared, if you would like, to talk to you this afternoon about the kinds of estimates that gave rise to, for example, the $1-billion commitment the Treasurer has made over the next period of years. We would be happy to share that information with you.

Mrs Caplan: It might be fair to say that while we could have a full discussion of the cost experience to date, this motion, as presented, would put a lot of people to a lot of effort without producing any more information that we could discuss today. Is that a fair statement?

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Mr Thomas: I'm not sure how much use it would be, compared to having a discussion about how one forecasts the potential expenditures arising out of the methodologies that are contained within Bill 102.

Mrs Caplan: One last question: Points 7 and 8 refer to the private sector. Do you have information, or does the Pay Equity Commission have information about the experience? We know a number of private sector employers have negotiated plans. Have they also gathered that information, to let us know whether or not the cost of those plans was within what we had contemplated when the policy was developed?

Mr Thomas: If you'd like, we can check with the commission on that, Ms Caplan. My information from my staff is that the only information the Ministry of Labour has is anecdotal and that the adjustment costs tended to be lower than one would have expected.

Mrs Caplan: Repeat that again. The adjustment costs, from the anecdotal evidence from the private sector --

Mr Thomas: Have been lower than one might have expected.

The Chair: Mr Arnott.

Mr Arnott: I'm quite disturbed by what the member for Oriole just tried to present in the way of an observation, to suggest that this information would be of little utility to this committee. I think it's absolutely essential. I know, in speaking with a number of my constituents in the week between the presentations to this committee, and this one, now starting into clause-by-clause, constituents in Wellington were absolutely aghast when I told them we were entering into something about which we had really no exact idea of what it was going to cost.

I think it's absolutely essential that this committee have the best information it can with respect to the cost. If we can't have exact dollar figure projections for the next few years, I would expect that the ministry would have some projection at least, the best estimate it could provide us. I think that's absolutely essential, and I don't think it would be wasting anybody's time to present this committee with dollar figures of what this bill is going to be costing.

Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): Call the question.

Mrs Caplan: On a point of privilege, Mr Chair: I listened very carefully to what my colleague in the Conservative caucus just said. He used words, and I think if you checked Hansard you'd see that I did not say what he said I said. I object and would ask him to withdraw.

Mr Jackson: I think you said "limited utility" and he said "little utility." Now that that's been clarified, could we call the question, Mr Chair?

The Chair: We still have Mr Lessard who wants to ask a question.

Mr Jackson: So you don't recognize calling the question? That's fine.

The Chair: Are you moving closure?

Mr Jackson: That's fine. It's only a simple motion.

The Chair: I realize that. But in fairness, Mr Lessard has been waiting to ask a question.

Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Walkerville): I'm not going to comment on the utility of the information but I do have some concern with respect to a couple of the questions, specifically 1 and 3, that refer to adjustment costs for the years 1992 and 1993. I don't know how we would be able to provide that information. Some of the questions refer to projected costs, and that's certainly something we may be able to provide, but actual costs for years that haven't been completed yet I think may be impossible.

I'm also advised that some of this information may have to come from the Treasurer, and from Management Board staff I am advised that we may not be able to provide some of this. So at this time I wouldn't be prepared to support this motion until I knew exactly what information we may be able to provide. We may find that if we defer consideration of this, there's some information we would be able to compile.

The Chair: Mr Jackson.

Mr Jackson: I'm surprised you've never had a request like this. It's quite routine. The answer will come back that this information is not obtainable, so for those who are concerned about that --

Mrs Caplan: So why would you ask the question?

Mr Jackson: You'd ask the question because there is, by everybody's admission, some doubt as to whether the data can be retrieved. As long as there's doubt, let the civil service proceed to obtain the data. Where it's not available, they will quite candidly and quickly advise us of that. Where there is extensive difficulty, it is the custom that they advise the clerk through the Chair, the clerk informs the committee and we get on with the show. But I don't see why we're debating this motion for some 20-odd minutes now when it's a simple request for information. We'll get the best information that is available at the time. It's an assist to this committee, and when it's presented to the House -- and frankly, Mr Chair, I think we can proceed. We're prepared to live with incomplete data, honestly conveyed by the ministries involved, and we accept that.

But to sort of shoot in the dark, to try and determine what is or is not available, we've heard very clearly from the ministry they're willing to provide what they can as quickly as possible. That's always been good for me in the eight years I've been here, so please proceed.

Mr Thomas: I just wanted to make the observation, and I think I've made it before, that there is some information that we can provide this afternoon with respect to some of the questions, and to the extent that it would assist in the work you do from here on, we'd be happy to provide you with that information.

Ms Poole: There is one additional piece of information that I think would be very helpful to the committee and that is the commitments that government has made for paying the cost of implementing pay equity plans, for instance, in the broader public sector, in the public sector, and whether to date those commitments have been met. Two questions: Have the commitments been made to pay for implementation, as well as the cost of the actual plan and, secondly, have they been met?

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): Just some clarification: I heard you say that in the private sector there was not very much adjustment paid out in regard to pay equity. Is there a study done on that or some available documentation that you could share with us when you say not very much was done? What are you basing that comment on?

Mr Thomas: I can give you some this afternoon. I'm just not quite sure at what point you want to hear it. There's a motion with respect to supplying data. I'd be happy to provide that information or whatever information we have as soon as the motion is dealt with.

The Chair: We'll deal with the motion first, and then if you want to ask questions and get some of the responses -- further questions or comments on Mr Arnott's motion?

Mr Jackson: Recorded vote, Mr Chair.

The Chair: Fine, recorded vote. Seeing no further questions on Mr Arnott's motion, all those in favour?

Ayes

Arnott, Curling, Jackson, Murdock (Sudbury), Poole.

The Chair: All those opposed?

Nays

Akande, Caplan, Lessard, Malkowski, Mathyssen, Wiseman.

The Chair: The motion is lost.

Just a reminder to all the committee members that they have in front of them a few more submissions that came in after the public hearings were finished. Tomorrow morning we'll be starting the clause-by-clause on Bill 102.

Ms Poole: Mr Chair, just on a point of order or a point of information before we proceed, when I've been in other committees and there has been a tie vote and then it depends on the Chair's vote to break that tie, I may be wrong, but my understanding was that the Chair's responsibility --

Interjection.

Ms Poole: It wasn't a tie?

The Chair: The vote was six to five against.

Interjections.

Mr Jackson: You didn't mention Elinor. That's the problem.

Ms Poole: But we had Ms Murdock --

The Chair: Mrs Caplan voted against.

Ms Poole: Oh. I can't count. What can I say?

The Chair: Okay. Now we'll proceed with some technical questions to the staff who were requested to be here today.

Ms Poole: I've got lots of questions.

The Chair: That's what we're here for. This is what the rest of the afternoon is going to be spent on. Ms Poole.

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Ms Poole: I didn't prepare my questions in the light of a motion per se, but I think there certainly are certain aspects of the PC motion where it might be quite helpful for us to receive information.

For instance, when we're talking about annual pay equity adjustment costs to the OPS, perhaps we could ask you for 1990 and 1991. I would think that information would probably be relatively readily available even though you might not have final figures in for 1992-83. I think that would be quite helpful if you could provide it.

When the minister appeared before us last week and we asked about the costs, one of the things the minister had responded with was the fact that there had been a survey sent out. I think he was specifically relating his comments to the proxy method, but he referred to a survey that had been sent out to the various organizations asking, I assume, for payroll, what the estimates were of what they thought pay equity might cost and the numbers available as to the people in their particular organizations that would be available for proxy method, for instance. Could you give us some details of this particular survey that was sent out: when it was sent out, to whom it was sent out and the type of deadline you had for this survey to be back in?

Mr Thomas: Just to clarify, the survey that the Minister of Labour referred to was put together to determine the extent to which the government could make, in effect, a down payment on the proxy plan; in other words, to allocate a certain fund of money and to distribute that money by way of a down payment program to women in the lower-paid jobs in the broader public sector.

We surveyed 1,850 organizations. The survey went out, I believe, in early November with a return date by mid-December. We got a return rate of about 80%. The purpose of it was to determine the different female job classes and their wage rates, to determine which ones might likely benefit from proxy and to then decide what sort of payout we would make by way of a down payment, if you will, on proxy.

Ms Poole: So this survey was actually only related to the down payment and not any type of attempt to calculate the overall cost of proxy?

Mr Thomas: That's right.

Ms Poole: Can you extrapolate from those particular figures and give us an idea of the cost?

Mr Thomas: No, but I can give you some information on what we're estimating around proxy.

Ms Poole: That would be helpful.

Mr Thomas: I wonder if I might just take a few minutes on that because that might answer it. If I take you through the analysis that has given rise to some of the numbers we've been using, it might be helpful in terms of directing other questions or perhaps answering some you would like to raise.

If we start with what the Minister of Labour told you a couple of weeks ago, there are approximately 420,000 full-time equivalents, FTEs, who stand to benefit from the new methodologies of proportional value and proxy. When we say FTEs, there are probably more than 420,000 people who would benefit from it, because there are part-time workers and whatever, so the 420,000 represents a full-time equivalent workforce.

Of that 420,000, we estimate 80,000 are proxy beneficiaries, and those would all be in the public sector, and the other 340,000 are proportional value beneficiaries. We've estimated that this is split roughly into two thirds private sector and one third public sector. There would be about 220,000 FTEs in the private sector and 120,000 in the public sector who would benefit from proportional value.

I take you through that before we get to the money part to give you a sense of how we think the sectors are broken down in terms of how they will benefit from pay equity. Therefore, we're talking, with respect to public sector, which would attract government funding, about approximately 200,000 people who would benefit from the new methodologies, the 80,000 proxy and the 120,000 public sector.

We estimate that the wage bill for the relevant sector is about $8 billion. That's what is referred to and is becoming, actually, a well-known phrase, the non-MUSH wage bill, "non-MUSH" referring to not in the municipalities, universities, schools or hospitals and colleges. It tends to be the lower wages. It tends to be the female establishments that are in the non-MUSH broader public sector, on the theory that those in the MUSH sector already received pay equity or are entitled to get pay equity through job-to-job. I think that's accepted as being reasonably accurate.

So the wage bill we're concerned about here is about $8 billion for the provincial portion. The province doesn't pay all of the funding to non-MUSH agencies and we've estimated a 20% factor to add on to that to get you a total wage bill for the sector. So we estimate the total wage bill for the non-MUSH sector at about $9.6 billion. I tell you that because it's an important figure in that legislated requirements are based on percentages of payroll.

Ms Poole: What was the $8 billion?

Mr Thomas: The $8 billion was the provincial portion of the total non-MUSH sector.

Ms Poole: And the $9.6 billion is a total.

Mr Thomas: The $9.6 billion is ramping it up 20% to factor in the fact that the total payroll, when you have municipalities and other people paying into it, is higher, we estimate, by 20%.

The proxy wage bill is estimated at $3 billion and the proportional value wage bill is estimated at $6.6 billion of the $9.6 billion. So if you want to break it down between proxy and PV, it's $3 billion proxy and about $6.6 billion proportional value. If you want to talk about this on an annualized basis, as you know, the act requires 1% of payroll annually, so therefore in the proxy sector we would be looking at 1% of $3 billion or something in the order of at least $30 million annually.

In fact, $30 million annually leads to a very, very long period of time before the proxy sector people achieve pay equity. The government, I think, has estimated that the amount it would be forecasting would be spent on proxy each year might be several per cent of payroll, perhaps 3% or 4%, so you might spend $90 million, say, $100 million, $80 million on proxy on an annual basis. But that would be doing better than the 1% minimum you're obliged to spend. On proportional value it would be $66 million per year. That's the 1% of $6.6 billion.

Those are the annualized costs. Again, I think you will appreciate that one has to put some significant qualifications around the forecasting. We're dealing with 420,000 beneficiaries in thousands of different kinds of organizations and thousands of different kinds of job classes, and it's impossible to estimate precisely who's going to end up using what system. I think there has to be a qualification placed on it. What we can give you, though, are some ballpark numbers that will perhaps be of some assistance to you. That's what happens with respect to the annualized cost.

There are studies that suggest pay equity recipients receive wage increases of between 10% and 20% of salary. That's not 10% or 20% of payroll. The payroll may only go up by 3% or whatever, or 2% or 5%, but the women who are entitled to pay equity, the studies show, tend to receive wage increases of between 10% and 20%. In an all-female sector, the cost may be closer to 15% of payroll. If the women who are in the proxy sectors got 15% of payroll at maturity, proxy would cost $450 million at maturity. And if over the next few years the government were to commit to spending its $90 million a year, you can do your own calculations for at what period of time one would reach the $450-million figure.

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In predominantly female sectors, the proportional value sectors, the costs may average 4% to 6% of payroll, because there are a number of people in the sectors who don't receive pay equity adjustments yet are part of the payroll. We estimate that the proportional value cost at 4% to 6% of payroll would be something in the order of $400 million. The $400 million is basically 6% of $6.6 billion.

So if you ask how the government came up with $1 billion, it took the fact that there's been about $120 million spent on the OPS pay equity plan; we will provide information on that breakout over 1990 and 1991. Also, there is an estimate that about $175 million still remains to be spent on job-to-job; in other words, we're not finished job-to-job yet and we're not required to finish job-to-job until 1998, according to this bill. Also, there's about $175 million that would in effect not be attributable to Bill 102 but would be the $175 million of still unspent job-to-job moneys that will become owing. We estimate that proportional value will be about $400 million at maturity, and proxy will be something in the order of $285 million over the next three years.

So that's how the government came up with the $1-billion figure. Once that billion dollars is spent, the government would therefore be saying that we had reached maturity on PV and job-to-job but had not reached maturity on proxy, because we're not required to reach maturity on proxy. I mean, there's no deadline for proxy the way there is a deadline of 1998 for proportional value and job-to-job.

That's one set of information that I think you should know, in terms of what has been the government's thinking and how the billion dollars is allocated between the various methodologies.

The other piece of information I might bring to your attention -- and this may go to one of the points that Mr Curling raised and that the Conservative motion has asked for in its latter two parts -- is that the pay equity office commissioned two survey studies to help monitor the implementation activities of pay equity. These studies -- one was done in 1990 and the other in 1991 -- are based on a sample of employers.

They showed that employers often do not have clear-cut estimates of pay equity costs, but that total adjustments to be made to achieve pay equity, as reported by the employers in the surveys, were a small fraction of the annual payroll. On average, the estimated total adjustments would amount to 1% to 2% of current annual payroll. The total pay equity adjustments estimated by public sector employers averaged about 2.2% of payroll, which I think is building on the answer I gave to one of your earlier questions, Ms Caplan, about the expenditures in the public sector, that yes, there will be some that would be 4% to 5%, but some are somewhat less than that. The average total adjustments estimated by private sector employees with 100 to 500 employees was 1.2%.

Those are studies done in 1990 and 1991, and they do tend to show that the payouts with respect to the private sector have been lower than one might expect.

That, I think, is the sum total of readily available information, Ms Poole, that the Ministry of Labour is able to furnish you with, but we'd be happy to try and explain it a bit better or take any other questions you might have, if you want us to go and search for more.

Ms Poole: I have a number of questions, if I could perhaps ask one more before rotation, just to be fair about this.

When you were talking about the dollars in mature costs, you outlined $1 billion as the total of those various areas. What was your year for reaching those mature costs? I appreciate the fact you said that with proxy there is no deadline, but were you talking about 1 January 1998?

Mr Thomas: Yes, 1998.

Ms Poole: I have something that was given to me by one of the groups that are very involved in pay equity. It is a memo from the Ontario Ministry of Labour. There's no date on the memo but it was prior to the beginning of December, because that's when I received the memo. It was outlining the costs for pay equity, which are identical to what you just named, but it said dollars in mature costs by the 1994-95 fiscal year.

Mr Thomas: Yes. That was the original deadline in the Pay Equity Act, before the three-year extension on the deadline to reach maturity. The maturity numbers haven't changed; the length of time to realize those or to get to those has changed, by Bill 102.

Ms Poole: So in effect, what the three-year delay in the public sector of achieving pay equity means is that the next government will end up paying the tab for a significant proportion of this $1 billion.

Mr Thomas: No. One has to recognize that all of these costs are additional add-on costs. It's simply a matter of: At what point are you able to increase the payroll by $800 million or $700 million? That would happen in 1995 with the Pay Equity Act, in which case that level of funding would need to be required in future years; or you can do it by 1998, in which case you actually have several years after 1995 when you are still ramping up to the mature costs.

Ms Poole: But wouldn't it be true that if January 1, 1995 were the deadline for achieving pay equity, that would mean that in 1992, 1993, 1994 the majority of your public sector would have bought into it and would have implemented its plan and would have achieved pay equity; while what's happening under this is that you'll have a significant sector of the public service that will actually not get its equity adjustments till three years later? It really has delayed the achievement of pay equity, which must mean that it will also have delayed the cost for the government.

Mr Thomas: That's true, except for the fact that if government is going ahead with a pay equity methodology or a series of methodologies that in total are going to cost $1 billion, then that means you are increasing your payroll base, your transfer payment base, your whatever, by $1 billion. The only question is, when do you do that? Do you do that by 1995, in which case your expenditure budget is $1 billion higher, or do you do it by 1998, in which case your expenditure budget is $1 billion higher than it is now, three years later? In either case, your expenditure budget at some point is $1 billion higher.

I take your point. I'm just trying to explain, though, that in any event the money is folded into the base and becomes an ongoing government commitment year after year, either from 1995 on or from 1998 on, depending on which act or bill you're referring to.

Ms Poole: I'd like to allow some other members to have their questions; if possible, I'd like to go back on the list, because I do have some more questions in this line.

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The Acting Chair (Mrs Irene Mathyssen): Certainly. I'd just like to remind committee members that there is no formality to this procedure. I will simply recognize you as I see your hand. Feel free to ask questions at any point. Mr Arnott?

Mr Arnott: I have no questions at this time, Madam Chair.

The Acting Chair: Mr Jackson, did you have a question?

Mr Jackson: Did you see my hand?

The Acting Chair: No, but you seemed to be nodding. I thought perhaps you were --

Mr Jackson: Approving everything you say, Madam Chair.

The Acting Chair: I'm glad. I will refer to that statement at a later date. Are there any other questions?

Ms Sharon Murdock (Sudbury): On that last point, my understanding on what Ms Poole has asked -- correct me if I'm wrong -- say a $1-billion cost is there for pay equity, either job-to-job or for proportional value, to 1995. The government of the day, whichever it was, would have $1 billion to pay out over two years. By extending it to 1998, you have $1 billion over five years, but then that $1 billion has to be incorporated into the base for ever. I didn't think that was what Ms Poole was saying. I didn't think, from Ms Poole's question, that that's what she was saying. I just wanted to make sure that you and I are on the same wavelength.

Mr Thomas: That's right. Using your numbers as hypotheticals -- and they are -- if you had committed to spending $1 billion on pay equity because of the methodologies, and you decide you're going to do it in two years, then you're ramping it up at $500 million a year, at which point you then are at a new base level $1 billion higher. If you ramp it up over five years, you are doing the increase over a longer period of time: 200 million new dollars added to the base each year for five years. But at the end of the day you're still at $1 billion.

Ms Poole: I'd like to explore the cost of proxy. It is my submission that the government's delaying proxy by that one additional year from what Bill 168 required will mean that payouts at the earliest would be in 1994. According to people in the child care sector, they believe they really won't see anything till the beginning of 1995. I would assume that the government will make some sort of commitment to the proxy agencies that they will be picking up both the cost of the plan and the cost of implementing the plan. Am I correct in that particular assumption?

Mr Thomas: My understanding is that if you are on the proxy, there is commitment to pick up all of the proxy costs.

Ms Poole: Including implementation of the plan? For instance, if they have to hire a consultant or --

Mr Thomas: Oh, I don't know that.

Ms Barbara Sulzenko: No. The commitment is not to pay the consulting costs, but rather to pay the salary costs resulting from a proxy plan.

Ms Poole: So there is a commitment, for instance, for agencies like the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses, those agencies, that they would in fact have the cost of the payroll picked up, the payroll adjustments because of pay equity, but there would be no picking up of costs to prepare or implement this particular plan?

Mr Thomas: I'm not sure of the answer to the second part of your question. I do know that there is a commitment to pay 100% of the proxy salary increased costs.

The other thing is that as a down payment on proxy, the government is planning on spending up to $50 million this year to people who will be potential proxy recipients, and that's what the survey we were questioned on earlier this afternoon was aimed at discovering. We think most of it will go into the hands of women who would be proxy recipients. It is $50 million towards pay equity. If 1% is about $30 million, that's 1.5% or 2% this year that would be going into proxy payments by way of a down payment program.

Ms Sulzenko: Just with respect to the consulting costs, of course the pay equity office does provide information and educational materials to assist agencies in the development of pay equity plans. Also, when there is need for dispute resolution, the pay equity office provides its services in assisting the parties in arriving at a resolution of their disputes. The intention there is to conclude the matter and to be able to post pay equity plans, but also to reduce the cost to both parties.

Ms Poole: I wish I could share your optimism that the pay equity office will be able to assist to a great degree in formulating this plan. I think it was clear from some of the child care presenters and the shelter workers we had that they find this legislation incredibly complex. They don't understand it. They don't understand how it's to work. They don't understand the terminology. Their fear was twofold: (1) that they couldn't implement this without a great deal of help, and (2) that once it was implemented, with the history of government cutbacks they've seen in the past year, they were afraid they would have to stretch limited resources even further to pay for pay equity.

You may feel more comfortable with the fact that the pay equity office can really help them implement the plan to a great degree, but from what I've heard that simply isn't going to be possible with the resources of the pay equity office or the fact that it's an extremely complex system which people don't really understand.

It may not be a bad time to ask this right now. It is actually related not to proxy but to proportional. I've been talking to some people who work in the pay equity field and they are extremely concerned about the timing, that employers are going to have to be making payments retroactive to January 1, 1993, put a plan in place within, I think, six months of the date of proclamation but retroactive to January 1, 1993.

Yet the employers have been able to get very little information from the Pay Equity Commission as to how this proportional value is going to work. In fact, they have had some experts who have had a great deal of work to do with pay lines, for instance, and they said that when they've been talking to people from the commission they have neither guidelines nor a manual nor anything ready so that they can start work on this, but that they seem to have some rather strange notions about how pay lines are done. They seem to think it's all in a straight line, when people who have worked extensively with this type of thing say there might be a much more gradual curve. It's extremely important that you do the pay line properly.

I am concerned that if you are going to be putting this legislation through -- it may well be true that employers have known this was coming, but quite frankly, from a government that said in the throne speech that it was doing it, we had to wait a year before getting the first reading of legislation. Then for another year nothing happened and then, when it did happen, the original legislation was not dealt with but instead a new act was brought in.

Why would employers have gone out and done all this work on proportional, trusting that the government was going to bring it in when the facts showed very clearly that the government was not in a position to proceed? Now you are just going to say with this legislation retroactively, "You must have brought in the plan, but we don't have a whole lot of information to help you in developing this plan." Quite frankly, I think it's going to do a lot of damage to the whole principle of pay equity if we're in chaos, because the resources aren't there to help people.

Mr Thomas: Ms Poole, it's my understanding that there were a number of submissions made to the committee over the past couple of weeks on questions around the methodology and which one was the most appropriate and what will work best, and a number of questions that would lead one to conclude that it would be incorrect for the commission to be out there marketing or educating or training on a particular methodology that hasn't been proclaimed.

I can tell you that the commission is well aware and the pay equity office is well aware of the obligation to educate the community when the bill is proclaimed, and is prepared to do so and has developed guidelines and whatever else needs to be done, which can be modified depending on what happens to the bill. But my sense of it is that the commission is ready to roll and is waiting for proclamation of the act.

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Ms Poole: In so much as it is inappropriate for the commission to be out there developing manuals and training guidelines before the act is proclaimed, I submit to you that this is exactly what you're asking employers to do. Whether it be in the public sector or the private sector, they're to retroactively have provided moneys to do all this stuff, yet it may take them some time to get a plan in place after proclamation. I would be very surprised if proclamation took place before May at the earliest.

Ms Murdock: Madam Chair, basically, I'm not objecting to Ms Poole's questions if they're technical, but if she's asking for any kind of political opinion or comment upon what they were told to do, I don't think they can answer to that.

Ms Poole: But it isn't a political question; it's a pragmatic question. Employers have to deal with this legislation fairly quickly once it's proclaimed. I am very concerned if the resources are not there. As short a time as two weeks ago they were asking questions about the Pay Equity Commission like, "How would this work?" They were saying: "We don't really know. It's pretty complex, so we're not really sure what's happening." I hope there's a whole lot more happening behind the scenes than a couple of people have been telling me who have worked extensively with the Pay Equity Commission in the past. I'm just concerned about how this is going to be implemented.

Mr Thomas: I've attempted to address the question about the commission and if it will be ready. The only other thing I can say is that if it is proclaimed in May or June and therefore employers have, in effect, the balance of this calendar year to get proportional value plans in place, I think it's important to distinguish that planning need from the fiscal planning need. The employers are already in the position of knowing that they may well be obliged to commit 1% of payroll, effective January 1, 1993, to pay equity, whatever methodology falls out. So a prudent employer would be making some financial plans around something in the order of at least 1% and would be working with the commission starting in June or whenever it's proclaimed to put together the plan.

I think you can distinguish the retroactive aspect, which is a fiscal issue through which planning could be done now, from the concerns around how one actually gets the plan in place and if the commission will be ready to help. As I say, my information is that the commission will be ready to help.

Ms Poole: I hope that is true. I don't doubt that they will be ready to help; it's whether the information and resources that are necessary will be available to help. I guess we'll just have to wait and see on that one.

I'd like to go back to the memorandum from the Ministry of Labour to the Ontario Federation of Labour that I referred to earlier. I'm sorry; I should have been prepared and gotten you copies so you had it in front of you.

Mr Thomas: Could I ask for a copy before I'm asked a question about it, please?

Ms Poole: I'll hold off on this line of questioning, maybe, for two minutes while we get some copies for members.

Just while we're waiting for it, the line of questioning related to what was going to be the average adjustment to various sectors on an annual basis of having pay equity: Do any other members have questions while we're waiting, or shall I proceed on to some other?

Since we're talking about the Pay Equity Commission, I will find somewhere on my desk a brief that the Canadian Manufacturers' Association provided in writing to the committee last week which, of course, I can't find at the moment. I'll find it immediately after I finish my questioning.

Anyway, the point the Canadian Manufacturers' Association made was that the Pay Equity Commission and the office developed guidelines and assistive materials to help employers to understand and implement pay equity, but that the tribunal was not bound by these guidelines and that there were instances in which the tribunal came out with a different decision than the decisions made by the pay equity office.

I wonder if you could tell us whether there's any way we could strengthen this legislation so you don't have the Pay Equity Commission, the pay equity office and the pay equity tribunal operating sometimes under different sets of rules, because it seems to me that's counterproductive -- whether the tribunal in fact could help develop the guidelines so that everybody's operating under the same set of rules.

Mr Thomas: I think that's a good question. The Pay Equity Act, which is still a relatively new piece of legislation compared to other pieces of legislation, is going to end up requiring ongoing interpretations for some time, and certainly the commission has worked very hard, I think, to establish guidelines and policies to assist the parties. I don't think it's surprising. I was on the startup of a new tribunal some years ago, the Workers' Compensation Appeals Tribunal, and certainly there were periods of time in the early years where the guidelines were not always followed by the tribunal. I think that's going to be expected. The question becomes, I think, how do the organizations handle a decision out of a tribunal that is at odds with a guideline, and will the guideline come in line with the decision or vice versa? I think that's a matter of watching it evolve. I haven't heard a lot of widespread concern about that. I've heard the occasional situation happen. I'm not sure there's been sufficient problems of that nature to warrant legislated change.

I think it's a matter of watching the jurisprudence unfold and seeing if the commission does in fact respond to the tribunal's interpretations. The tribunal is, as you know, interpreting the act and the commission is doing its best to try to come up with its own interpretations, sometimes before the tribunal has had a chance to rule on the same section, because the commission got the case before the tribunal got it. The commission got to deal with the particular section of the act on a practical level before the tribunal got to deal with it.

Ms Catherine Evans: If I could add to that, the pay equity office is also very careful when it publishes guidelines to let employers, bargaining agents and employees know that those guidelines do not bind the tribunal. As helpful as they are, employees and employers know that the tribunal does not have to abide by those guidelines.

Ms Poole: I can appreciate that, but I just find it difficult when employers and employees are both relying on guidelines to assist them. I would think it may not be a legislative solution that's necessary but perhaps a review of how, with the amount of jurisprudence that you have to date, for instance, areas in which the two, the tribunal and the pay equity office, could work more closely with the guidelines to ensure that they are in fact not something that's going to prove to be a detriment down the line.

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Mr Thomas: The tribunal, I believe, publishes decisions, certainly important ones. My sense is that the community out there is pretty well up to speed in knowing when and how to look up tribunal case law and making sure that whatever guidelines might be inconsistent, they assess how to handle the case of an inconsistency between the guideline and the case law.

Mrs Caplan: My line of questioning is really supplementary to the line of questioning that Ms Poole has begun, and that is, have you, has the ministry or the government considered the notion, now that you do have that case law in place, of allowing advance ruling? Then when in good faith an employer comes to the commission and gets a guideline and then comes back later and in good faith has devised a plan in accordance with the guideline and is faced with a tribunal decision that's inconsistent with the advice it was given -- I know how frustrating that is to employers who have acted in good faith, whereas the concept of advance ruling says it's not a guideline -- if you come and you act in good faith and you abide by the ruling that you've been given in advance, then in fact you will be protected and the tribunal will respect the advance ruling that has been given. Has that concept been something that has been considered by the ministry and the government, now that you have sufficient cases to be able to consider advance ruling?

Mr Thomas: We have sufficient cases, Mrs Caplan. I don't know whether we have sufficient examples of the problem. In other words, I don't know that moving to advance rulings is the right answer for the number of times that this problem has occurred. Advance rulings carry with them a number of other drawbacks, including the fact that the tribunal would be, in effect, on a particular fact situation, fettering the discretion of the commission. One would want to be very careful about the circumstances in which one permitted that to happen.

You would have to be reasonably confident that you had a very large, serious problem that you couldn't solve in any other way than to go to advance rulings of the tribunal, in effect setting the road map for what the commission could do. That would be a very substantial change in a wealth of jurisdictions.

Mrs Caplan: What about the concept then of the commission giving advance rulings so that they would set the parameters for the tribunal? I guess I'm concerned particularly on something where you have employers wanting to act in good faith; you've got significant case law that's in place now. Obviously one of the reasons that the plans have not been developed is because there are questions. I see you nodding your head.

They've had problems. If they could get an advance ruling from the commission, that would give them comfort, should there be an appeal of the plan, that the tribunal would look at the ruling by the commission. We're now talking about the kind of good-faith plan development, good-faith negotiations with a reasonable employer. Has that been considered by the government, so that the role of the commission, which you're changing in this legislation anyway -- so that they could consider advance ruling?

Mr Thomas: I think the answer to your question is yes and no. The yes part is that I think the commission already does a fair amount of work in trying to help the parties early on with respect to problems that they are encountering in understanding the legislation or putting together the pay equity plan.

To ask the commission to go further, though, and in effect do an advance ruling that would somehow reflect what the tribunal would do, would be to fetter the discretion of a superior body from an adjudicative point of view. The tribunal takes a lot of pride in the fact that it decides each case on its own facts and its own merits, and to have a commission somehow purport to make a decision that would be binding on the tribunal is I think putting the cart before the horse.

Mrs Caplan: To put it in simple terms, the reason for the line of questioning is that it would seem to me that anything we could do to make it easier for good employers to implement pay equity would be a good thing. I'm just wondering, given the experience you've had to date, what, if anything, you're hearing from employers that they would like to make it easier for them to implement.

Mr Thomas: We're hearing that certainly the work the commission has done so far in terms of education and the help that it has given in the role of review services is seen to be quite helpful. I think it challenges the one that Ms Poole made reference to, and that is the capacity of the organization to be able to address effectively, quickly and promptly the issues around educating and training of the employers around proportional value and proxy. That's certainly something the commission has been looking at for some time and I believe will be ready to roll on.

Mrs Caplan: If I could -- Ms Poole, is it all right?

Ms Poole: Sure. Go ahead.

Mrs Caplan: My next questions are not supplementary but they do follow. You've raised the issue of cost of the development of the plan and the role of the commission in education for employers who are going to be looking at proportional and proxy. I'm interested particularly in the cost of the development of those plans.

Do you have any documentation, whether it's anecdotal or specific evidence, of what the costs of the development of a plan has been for a small employer? I'm talking in the under-20-employees range. Do you know what it costs on average to develop a plan for a small employer?

Mr Thomas: No, I don't.

Mrs Caplan: You have no idea?

Mr Thomas: I'll see if I can find out, though, before the afternoon is out.

Mrs Caplan: I know that was a concern that was expressed by a number of the agencies that came forward, many of which would qualify. They have few employees. Some are even under 10, and to develop a plan with proxy comparator, they were concerned about what the cost of the development of the plan might be. I just wondered whether there was any experience as to what a plan costs, not necessarily job-to-job comparator, although we could use that as an example of just what it costs to develop a plan.

Mr Thomas: I think the anecdotal evidence is that the cost is very small for the small ones. The small ones tend not to hire consultants. The anecdotal evidence is that the cost for the small employer isn't very large.

Mrs Caplan: At what size is a consultant usually required? When you say for small employers, what size do you usually see a consultant brought in for the development of a plan?

Mr Thomas: When you say "required," do you mean --

Mrs Caplan: Does the employer feel it's necessary?

Mr Thomas: I don't know that you could actually pick a size. I can certainly say that a consultant was helpful in the OPS plan, so we know that when it's 80,000 people --

Mrs Caplan: I was sort of thinking of something lower than 80,000. We were talking in the range of 20. Certainly as the employer of 80,000, that was quite a task, but we're narrowing it down.

Mr Thomas: Okay, so we've got the range.

Mrs Caplan: That's right. Bigger than a breadbasket but smaller than the OPS.

Mr Thomas: I think part of it depends on the complexity of the employer's business, and I'm not trying to avoid the question, but certainly when you're into many job classes and therefore you're into maybe changing your classification system, some employers have taken pay equity as an opportunity to change their classification system where they have an outdated classification system. How much of the cost of changing the classification system you attribute to pay equity versus the fact that they wanted to go to a new system anyhow is a good question.

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Mrs Caplan: Would it be fair to say that any employer with a formal job classification system would feel the need for a consultant to come in to develop the plan?

Mr Thomas: No. In fact some of them who have formal ones probably were able to get the pay equity plan off the shelf from the organization that supplied them with their classification system.

Mrs Caplan: I guess the next question on the experience was, for the smaller employer without a formal job classification plan, without an understanding of job classification and job evaluation, how could he do a plan without support from a consultant?

Mr Thomas: Again, it depends on how many job classes they've got. If they're very small, first of all, they may not have had to deal with this problem because they were one of those ones on one of those charts I showed you where they had female jobs and no male jobs lined up, so for them the exercise up to now was easy. I think the commission has tended to provide most employers who have asked for it with the information they need to allow them to do pay equity plans without the need of a consultant.

Mrs Caplan: Thank you. I appreciate the answers.

The Acting Chair: Ms Poole, have you your information now?

Ms Poole: Yes, I think the clerk has distributed two pages that were part of the memo to the Ontario Federation of Labour about the costing of pay equity. If you look at the first of the two pages, which is entitled Proxy Pay Equity Costing, you'll notice it has a number of subsectors and then it has various estimates of the number who benefit, the full-time average annual adjustment and the annual total cost.

In child care, for instance, it says there will be 16,000 in the female job class who benefit. The full-time annual average adjustment is given to be $10,000 and the annual total cost $160 million for the child care sector alone. What I'm trying to figure out is where the figure of $10,000 as an annual average adjustment comes from? Is this the estimate of when full --

Mr Thomas: Page 2 of the notes, Ms Poole -- first of all, it is perhaps an example of why I put a qualification on my costing numbers earlier on, and that is that one rarely compares apples to apples when one looks at different charts that have come along at different times.

For example, with respect to visiting home makers and children's aid societies, they took the OPS as the proxy, and the OPS does not show up as a proxy organization on the schedule I tabled last time. In child care, they used municipal child care adjustments moving salaries to the $35,000 range. Whether or not that's the comparator that would ultimately be used is a good question. Is it?

Interjection: It is.

Ms Sulzenko: There's another example as well. Developmental services here are cited as 7,000 FTEs, whereas we know there are about 12,800 FTEs in the developmental sector. Presumably this chart has made some extrapolation of those people in developmental services who will be able to do pay equity via some other method, but it's not clear how they arrived at this inference that it's 7,000 out of 12,800 that would in fact be done by proxy.

Mr Thomas: My other point is that I'm quite gratified to find a chart come out that is within $50 million of the suggestion that I put to you earlier on, that proxy-costed maturity might be $450 million for about 80,000 people. Here's a chart at 74,500 with a total annual cost of $392 million. I guess it suggests that our estimating is in the right ballpark.

Ms Poole: Don't be mistaken; this is from the Ontario Ministry of Labour.

Mr Thomas: Things change. I don't know when this was done. It's not dated. It was done at a time when someone thought that using OPS as proxy might be one possibility. Yes, and it is possible that some sectors are going to have significantly higher increases than 10% or 15% and some will have significantly lower. We were putting out a figure of 15% as an average that one might see across the whole proxy sector. That will depend on the degree of undervaluing of the work that women are doing in the various sectors compared to other proxy establishments that are comparators.

Ms Poole: I just am concerned that any of the figures that come out -- it seems to be a very inexact art right now as opposed to being an exact science, because so much is predicated on what the plans are eventually going to look like.

Mr Thomas: But that's the point. When one gets into a legislative amendment that extends proportional value and proxy to 420,000 women working in thousands and thousands of different occupations and companies and organizations across the province of Ontario, one is going to have some difficulty making it the kind of exact science that one would like to make it. But the fact that we are able to look at a number of different ways of cutting it which produce estimates that are all in the same kind of ballpark, I think, should give some comfort that we are able to predict with some degree of accuracy, given all the qualifications I've put on it of what the cost might be.

Ms Poole: Does anybody else have questions or shall I keep going?

The Acting Chair: Mr Jackson has a question and I believe it's supplementary to yours, so if you would allow Mr Jackson.

Mr Jackson: Ms Poole had raised a question about the child care, but isn't the $10,000 -- does that not include the bump funding that the province implemented, the five and five? I know that the explanatory page 2 indicates it was from a municipal calculation, but is that not where you arrive at the $10,000 adjustment?

Mr Thomas: By five and five, are you referring to the $2,000 payment?

Mr Jackson: It's more than that. The bump funding was more than $2,000.

Mr Thomas: No, the funding that -- I believe what you're referring to, Mr Jackson, the bump funding, was $2,000 a person.

Mr Jackson: And then there was a second bump, or was it split $1,000, $1,000 into two instalments?

Mr Thomas: I don't know. The only figure that I'm aware of -- and I can doublecheck this for you -- is that the child care sector received a $2,000 increase about a year ago.

Ms Sulzenko: In 1991.

Mr Jackson: Yes.

Mr Thomas: And whether that would reduce the adjustment by $2,000, again I'd have to go back and consider when this table was put together in relationship to that bump funding activity, Mr Jackson.

Mr Jackson: You wouldn't mind checking that out for me, if in fact it is eight or 10 and therefore 12 or whatever.

Mr Thomas: Not at all.

Mr Jackson: Thank you.

Ms Poole: I'd like to refer you to the brief by the Ontario Nursing Home Association from last week. I don't think you actually need the brief in front of you. I'll just read you the pertinent section.

They were very concerned about the implementation of proxy comparison if full funding was not provided. They make the statement: "If full funding was provided by the government and the act remained in its current form, the government would be required to add over $410,000 for every 100-bed home. Across the province, this would result in an expenditure of over $123 million annually."

They were referring to pay equity only for the care sector -- not related to, say, the food sector -- in nursing homes and that type of thing. I'm trying to relate that statistic of $123 million annually for pay equity, as estimated by the Ontario Nursing Home Association, with what you've got in your proxy pay equity costing from the Ministry of Labour, which says for nursing homes the annual total cost would be $65.1 million, which I assume is for all females in that sector, not just the care component. When you heard these figures last week, did they bear any type of estimate that the Ministry of Labour has done?

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Ms Evans: Their estimate was based on a $5-an-hour difference that they identified between nursing homes and municipal homes for the aged. The estimate you have in front of you is a $2-an-hour difference. We have not asked them where their $5-an-hour difference came from. The information that we had was that there would be roughly a $2-an-hour difference.

Ms Poole: Again, I guess we get back to the fact that we hear different things and we have no idea of what this costs. The taxpayers one day may wake up, and we'll say, "Surprise, you've saved a lot of money that you thought you were going to have to pay," or, what is the converse, "This is far more expensive."

Ms Evans: The macroeconomic-level analysis tends to yield the same result. At an anecdotal level, because pay equity plans are not filed, it's very difficult to come up with exact figures. That's why staying with percentages and generalities will get you there, but sometimes it's not satisfactory because the individual pieces don't always seem to fit together.

Ms Poole: I would have thought, for instance, for the Ontario nursing homes, which are comparing themselves to homes for the aged, I wouldn't want to say it's easy, but it would be not as difficult to obtain the statistics for the comparison. That would be one of the easier comparators, I would believe, because there is a fairly direct relationship that one could prove.

If the ballpark varies by twice the amount in one sector, then it does give me some concern over estimates. If, at some later date, the government is going to say, "Well, our estimates were really wrong; with the deficit we have, we're going to have to cut back in this particular sector in order to pay for pay equity," that will end up in an enormous backlash that will not serve the women of this province well.

That's why I think the figures are fairly important, not because we expect to be able to say within $1 million what it will cost, but with the uncertain fiscal situation, it could be extremely difficult if the treasury is operating on these assumptions and a very different reality comes out.

Mr Thomas: Can I just make a few responses? First of all, I think it's important to recognize that the government's fiscal commitment in the proxy pay equity methodology is 1% a year. So you start with that as, at some point, always being a fiscally bottom-line limiting number. As I said, 1% of $3 billion is a $30-million commitment.

People who are in favour of moving towards pay equity would like to do so at a rate more rapid than 1% a year. So whether one can do 3% or 4% or whatever is a reasonable question to ask in light of the need to, at some point, bridge the gap. But there is a bottom line, a legislative minimum of 1%.

Secondly, I've just been asking people around here; this does not purport to be a Ministry of Labour document, and it doesn't have a date on it. So just simply before I end up owning this document, Ms Poole --

Ms Poole: I only had two of the four pages reprinted. The front page comes from the Ontario Ministry of Labour. It's signed by Salina Szechtman, workplace practices policy group, cc George Thomson, Deputy Minister of Labour.

Mr Thomas: Could I see the document, then?

Mr Curling: Pretty authentic, as far as I can tell, anyhow.

Mr Thomas: I'd like to check into this further. The information I'm hearing from people around me is that the document, the two-pager, is actually Pay Equity Commission material. I'm not trying to disclaim; I'm just trying to say to you that when you ask me if I can tie this back to all kinds of other Ministry of Labour estimates and whatever, I need to do some thinking about where this document came from and recognize, without trying to avoid your question at all, Ms Poole, that there are many people and a lot of organizations that have a lot of expertise and interest in this area. A lot of them have made different kinds of forecasts based on different assumptions about who the comparator would be and what the proxy organizations would be and what the adjustments would be. So I'd like to, first of all, check a bit more as to where this information came from. I think Ms Evans has given you possibly a large part of the answer to your nursing homes question.

Ms Poole: Anyway, if you are checking into it, I would appreciate this. I assumed, because it went out on Ontario Ministry of Labour letterhead and it said, "As discussed, please find attached the data outlining the numbers for the proxy groups," that they were numbers that the Ontario Ministry of Labour was comfortable with, whatever the original source. But it does emphasize again, I think, the inexactitude of the art, not the science.

Mr Thomas: It does that and we've acknowledged that.

Ms Poole: I'd like to move to one other area. We received a copy of your amendments, government amendments, just before we came in today. There were, quite frankly, a few amendments that I expected to see that are not here. One of them related to a presentation we had last week. It related to the group that was acting as an advocate for disadvantaged women and worked very closely with the Pay Equity Commission. I was looking for a copy of the brief they submitted so I would give you the actual name of the group. They were a legal and advocacy group, something along that line.

Mr Thomas: Yes, PEALS.

Ms Poole: PEALS, yes, pay equity legal and advocacy --

Ms Evans: Pay Equity Advocacy and Legal Services.

Ms Poole: One of the things they had suggested was that section 9 of the original act be amended to provide women with some protection against retaliation. They were very concerned, in instances they saw, that in fact there were several barriers to women coming forward with a pay equity plan and to continuing to fight for a pay equity plan. One of the things they said was that if there was an incident of retaliation, the burden of proof was on the employee instead of the employer, and this caused a lot of consternation among their clients. They felt that section 9 needed to be beefed up with an amendment. I wonder if the Ministry of Labour, after that particular presentation, had looked at that issue.

Mr Thomas: Yes, we had. There was some interest in doing it. It's consistent, I think, with provisions in the OLRA with respect to how one handles those kinds of problems, Ms Poole. My understanding was that the amendment would be out of order.

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Ms Poole: It would be out of order --

Mr Thomas: Without all-party consent, because that part of the act had not been opened up.

Ms Poole: So, because section 9 wasn't one of the sections opened up in Bill 102, this would be ultra vires; it would be outside of the scope.

Mr Thomas: That's my understanding.

Ms Poole: I have asked legislative counsel to bring forward an amendment for me in that regard, which she has kindly done. So if that answers that question, then tomorrow, when we're in clause-by-clause, I'll ask for all-party consent or we can at least have a debate on whether it can be introduced.

Bill 169: You're both with Ministry of Labour, but --

Mr Thomas: Kathy Bouey and Barb Sulzenko are here from Management Board of Cabinet.

Ms Poole: I just had a few questions about Bill 169, which hasn't had a whole lot of attention in this committee; the focus has been on Bill 102, the pay equity amendments. Section 2 of Bill 102 provides that the government can determine who is a crown employee for purposes of pay equity. I think you would probably agree that the purpose of this being in Bill 102 retroactive to December 1991 was to catch situations like the children's aid society and pay equity tribunal decisions. Could you tell me why it was necessary to insert section 2 in Bill 102? In addition to what Bill 169 would do, why was it necessary to have special inclusion in Bill 102?

Ms Bouey: I believe the pay equity legislation has its own process for determining who the employer is, so that when it's, say, a small establishment that has linkages to a head office or something like that, there's an ability to look more broadly as to who the employer is. Therefore, if one wanted to be consistent in terms of the government determining who its employees were for the purposes of regular labour relations, it was necessary to make the same amendment, for pay equity purposes, in Bill 102.

Ms Poole: Some women have perceived, and certainly a number of our presenters last week perceived, that what section 2 does in Bill 102 is take away pay equity rights that have been bestowed by the pay equity tribunal. So they've said, "On the one hand, parts of Bill 102 give rights to women, and other parts of it take away rights." What would your answer be to those presenters?

Ms Bouey: I think, first of all, it's important to remember that the government wanted to take over sole responsibility for determining who it is the employer of, because it is accountable for that. In terms of what it does to pay equity, I think that was a situation the government looked at quite closely, and when new methods were introduced, such as proxy and proportional value -- making the government the employer used to be the only route some of these women had to achieve pay equity. By having these new methods in place, these women now have an opportunity to achieve pay equity by other means, and therefore the government's need for its accountability could be dealt with at the same time as these women had access to pay equity.

Ms Poole: I believe, when I had a briefing on Bill 169 -- it was introduced in, what, December 1991, and in my naïveté I thought it was going to come up for second reading any day, so I immediately had a briefing, so this was a long time ago. But, as I recall, one of the statements made by the ministry representatives at that meeting was that pay equity was not to be used as a mechanism of parity.

Ms Sulzenko: That's correct. Pay equity is in place to eliminate gender-based discrimination in pay rates, not differentials in pay rates that may be the result of other factors. As Kathy has just said, with the introduction of the new methods, everyone in the public sector now has access to pay equity, the elimination of gender-based pay discrimination, without resort to government-as-employer rulings.

Ms Poole: I think Ms Caplan has some supplementaries. I just have one more question along this line. Why was Bill 169 introduced as a companion piece of legislation at the same time as Bill 168? The government House leader said they were to be dealt with together, and even 102 and 169. The debate was held on the two pieces of legislation together. We are in committee in clause-by-clause on them together. Why is Bill 169 tied in to Bill 102?

Ms Sulzenko: You'll note that the wording in Bill 102 refers to the Public Service Act and the definition of "crown employer" in the Public Service Act. Of course, that's done through Bill 169, so the wording of the two pieces of legislation linked them together. Under the Pay Equity Act, you can't be a crown employee except as defined in the Public Service Act, and Bill 169 does that. That's why they are linked together.

Mr Thomas: The other reason is the answer that Barb gave previously; that is, that on the one hand, one of the bills takes away, if you will, a methodology that some groups were driven to use because there was no other way for them to get pay equity: to try to find a way to become an employee of the OPS for pay equity purposes. At the same time, the other piece of legislation provides other means for those people to achieve pay equity within their own organization or within a schedule proxy organization.

Mrs Caplan: My supplementary is that Bill 169 goes beyond the designation of "employee" just for the purpose of pay equity and gives the government, in this legislation, the right to designate who is an employee for any other purpose. That's one of the concerns that has been raised, I think legitimately. That's so broad and open-ended that it is seen in some ways as going far beyond pay equity and having implications in the whole area of labour-management relations between the government of Ontario and the number of union and non-union employees -- I think it's almost 90,000 -- in the Ontario public service now.

I've raised this issue through the discussions at committee. You have the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act under review and discussion at this present time. It seems to me a reasonable assumption that Bill 102 could well deal with your definition for the purposes of pay equity, and Bill 169 in fact should better be dealt with as part of the reform of the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act. My question is why Bill 169 needs to go as a companion -- it does follow on Ms Poole's line of thinking -- when you can deal with the definition of employer for the purposes of pay equity, no matter who that employer is, in Bill 102.

Ms Sulzenko: Essentially there are two routes through which the government felt its ability to control the size of the public service was being threatened. One was though CECBA, the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act, and the other was through the Pay Equity Act, where groups of employees were seeking tribunal declarations that the government was the employee. So it seemed appropriate, in so far as the issue needed to be dealt with in respect of pay equity, needed to be dealt with in respect of CECBA, that they would both be dealt with at the same time, with Bill 169 as a companion to Bill 102.

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Mrs Caplan: So you agree that Bill 169 goes far beyond the boundaries of pay equity in determining employee status?

Ms Sulzenko: Yes, indeed I do. As I said, it addresses two means by which groups of employees have been seeking government-as-employer declarations.

Mr Thomas: Could I just respond further to one aspect of the question you raised, Mrs Caplan? I think you also alluded to the potential to affect labour-management relations. I would posit that in fact the intent in Bill 169 is to preserve labour-management relations and not to substantially change them.

I think there is a real danger that the effort to have people who are employed in the broader public sector become, in effect, either pay equity employees or real employees of the government through either CECBA applications or pay equity tribunal cases tends to have the effect of altering the governance structures. Who the employees ultimately work for becomes a really interesting question, and the extent to which the province of Ontario wishes to encourage community-based delivery of services is a real issue behind making sure that the governance systems are preserved and that the Ontario public service is made up of people who are in the Ontario public service as defined by the government and not those who may ultimately get brought in from a wide range of tribunal cases. So you could have a lot of people come in, or not know what their status is, and end up having boards of small organizations not sure what their job is with respect to "employer."

Mrs Caplan: I understand the argument, but I would restate the point that you could deal with in Bill 102 -- which are amendments to the Pay Equity Act for all employers, including the Ontario government -- a definition of who designates the employee. I would argue that Bill 169 is not required to do that for the Ontario public service government employer, that Bill 102 would accomplish that. Because you are an employer like any other in the province for the purpose of pay equity, and if you have the statement in Bill 102 that says very clearly that you're not a crown employee unless you've been designated a crown employee, then Bill 169 goes far beyond that.

Mr Thomas: You could, but you'd also raise the spectre of the potential for two effective dates. I think the positioning of Bill 169 with Bill 102 is a clear statement that government is intent on deciding who will be employees of the government for whatever purposes, whether it's pay equity or whatever.

Mrs Caplan: So really, in Bill 169 you could strike out the words "for pay equity" and you really could just have it "for whatever purposes" and it would be much clearer. The whole intent of Bill 169 is so the government can declare, for whatever reason, who an employee is, and it really has nothing to do with Bill 102, which could do the job for you for pay equity.

Ms Bouey: It's true that the effect is broader than pay equity, but I think it would be very confusing if, for example, in Bill 102, under that auspices, it was set out that, say, some sort of local board was the employer and then, at the same time, someone could go through the other process in terms of the more broad government-as-employer issue and find out at that point that the OPS was the employer. It sort of leaves a local board not clear on what it's accountable for, since both things affect compensation. It was quite important from a pay equity standpoint that people know just what they were responsible for. So that's the clear linkage to pay equity.

Mrs Caplan: This is not a question I expect you to answer; it's sort of rhetorical in nature. But it seems to me that Bill 102, which clearly stated the definition of "employer" and the ability of the government to state who is a crown employee, would be sufficient for the purposes of pay equity to allow the government to do that. If Bill 169 were less devious and clear, it could state that, for whatever reason, the government could determine who would be a crown employee, and that too would achieve the objective. I believe that the fact you have linked the two for the purposes of pay equity is so that nobody will notice how broad and sweeping Bill 169 is.

That's a policy decision. It was a decision made by the government. I'm not asking you to comment on it, but it is, at this point in time, important, I think, for the record to note that that's what's accomplished by the two pieces of legislation that have been brought together. I have concerns about the way it's been done and the lack of discussion, in an appropriate forum, for the broader issues to be discussed. Trying to keep this narrowed to pay equity, I think, does not serve public policy development well. I'm not asking for your comment. That was a statement.

Mr Arnott: I have a question for the deputy minister with respect to Bill 169. Is there a representative from the Management Board? Okay.

This is a letter I received from a constituent this past week, the Mount Forest Ambulance Service Ltd, signed by James A Borrett, president. I'll read you a portion of the letter that he sent me and I ask you to give consideration to the comment he's made and respond, if you will. I'll read slowly so as not to make it any more difficult. He writes as follows:

"The Ontario government responded to the jurisprudence of the Ontario Public Service Labour Relations Tribunal by passing regulation 181/90 (made April 10, 1990 and filed April 12, 1990). The effect of the regulation was that for the purposes of subsection 1(2) of the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act, the government designated as crown agents 21 privately owned ambulance services where the Ontario Public Service Employees Union had bargaining rights.

"Subsequent to this at 18 December 1991, Bill 169 was introduced and received first reading in the House. Bill 169 proposes to limit who may become crown employees, public servants and civil servants to those receiving an express appointment and to make only employees of designated crown agents eligible to be crown employees.

"In the interim, OPSEU has made application for representation rights for several groups. These are listed in appendix A" -- and he has listed them; they are all private ambulance operators -- "and include both private ambulance services, municipalities and an air escort agency. However, not all of these groups will receive equal treatment under Bill 169. Some of this group will receive preferential treatment in that they will not be swept up automatically as crown agents by virtue of the date at which OPSEU made its application for representation rights. The rest appear to be liable for inclusion as crown agents by virtue of the OPSEU application date, which is clearly to disadvantage that latter group.

"It is my belief that government must not only act fairly but appear to act fairly in this matter. In this instant situation my specific request is that Bill 169 be amended to reflect an equal and impartial treatment for all groups which remained as private operators after regulation 181/90 was passed. To do less would be to penalize these groups as a function of governmental procedure and slower than optimal legislative action. Clearly this is discriminatory and unfair and certainly not a function of the Legislature."

Ms Bouey: Could I just clarify? The author is proposing that the legislation be further retroactive, to the point of that regulation?

Mr Arnott: I can show you the letter.

Ms Bouey: I think the difficulty of doing what is proposed here is basically that it would be retroactive to the date before the bill was tabled. I gather that is not a normally acceptable procedure, for obvious reasons.

In terms of the ambulance sector, it's been a sector where there have been a number of these crown employer designations over a period. As I understand it, the Ministry of Health commissioned a report by Gene Swimmer in terms of the appropriate structure for the future of the ambulance industry. That report has been received. They're now reviewing that to determine the appropriate course of action. I would presume that decisions as to how to sort all this out would be made in the context of that review.

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Mr Arnott: But Mr Borrett's point, I guess, is that there are two groups that are not receiving equal treatment as a result of Bill 169. Would you say that's incorrect?

Ms Bouey: I think it is probably correct that they are not receiving equal treatment. I think that happens inevitably whenever you pick a date. If the date had been the date of proclamation of the legislation, we would still have that problem. It's a question of making the government's intent clear and trying to minimize those kinds of problems.

Mr Arnott: Thank you for your answer.

The Acting Chair: Further questions?

Ms Poole: I'm coming to the end of my questions, you will be relieved to know.

I had a question about the proxy model that is used in Bill 102, and actually that was one area in which I was surprised that the government did not have a few amendments. There was considerable criticism of the language, for instance, and the terminology used in the proxy model. There's also criticism of the fact that female jobs were compared to female jobs, as opposed to female jobs being compared to male jobs. Many presenters argued that this is against the spirit of pay equity, which by the very way it's set up is to eliminate gender discrimination on the basis of compensation by comparing female and male jobs.

It appeared from what we learned when the minister and ministry staff came before the committee the week before last that there have been two proxy models suggested, and it is the second model that is being brought into Bill 102. I'm assuming from comments made by presenters, that there wasn't a wide-based consultation with them about the fact the government intended to go with comparing female jobs to female jobs.

I'm making these assumptions because I wasn't part of the process, so I don't know what developed. Could you tell me why it was that the government went with comparing female jobs to female jobs?

Mr Thomas: First of all, I think there was a fair amount of consultation on the second model. The reason for going between female jobs -- first of all, one has to recognize that the female job in the proxy organization, the one you're comparing to, is a female job that's already received, either actually or notionally, its pay equity adjustment. So it's already according to the proxy establishment's pay equity plan being moved up to pay equity. It has already been compared to a male comparator and has received an adjustment to bring it in line. Although technically it is female to female, practically it's female to a male-adjusted female class.

The reason I would be concerned about going into a system that is female to male job class in the proxy organization is that you have the potential to set up different payouts for a female job in the seeking organization and the female job in the proxy organization, both of which are of the same value, because there might be several male jobs in the proxy organization that would be at different wage rates, but all be at the same value.

If the proxy organization was required to send over to the seeking one all of the male job class information, and the seeking organization didn't choose the same male one that the proxy one chose, you would have the potential for two different payouts in two different establishments, using each other in effect for the same value job. I think that might put the plan in the proxy organization up for attack. Furthermore, some of the male jobs may not have been used. They may not have been part of the pay equity process, so you might then be requiring the proxy organization to do a fair amount of work that it hadn't planned on doing, because it has already finished its pay equity plan.

So there were a number of methodological reasons, I think, Ms Poole, that caused us to conclude that even though the optics may not be perfect, the fact of the matter is you are comparing female to, in effect, the male-adjusted rate.

Ms Poole: Instead of saying that there hadn't been a great deal of consultation about the second method, it probably would have been more accurate to say there wasn't a great deal of consensus that the second method, comparing female jobs to female jobs, was the better way to go.

It seems that one of the objections the presenters have had relates to the integrity of the original plan. I think that the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses brought forward that particular point. They were concerned that if there was some problem with the original plan, then this would damage their particular pay equity plan. So I guess it goes down to integrity of the process.

Mr Thomas: That's the tradeoff, isn't it? In the model that we're talking about, you in effect take the proxy's pay equity plan with its glitches if they're there. The tradeoff, though, I suggest is far worse. The alternative is to end up going into a proxy organization's already negotiated pay equity plan -- posted, finalized, being implemented -- and you end up having an outsider organization say, "We've been able to construct a better pay equity plan using the same data that the proxy organization used to construct its."

That strikes me as a formula for complaints. That strikes me as absolute. I can predict with certainty that there will be complaints when you have two different female job classes at the same value in two different organizations that thought they were kind of using the same pay equity plan with different payouts.

That's the major danger we're trying to avoid and we do avoid by doing the female to female. But I do recognize that if there are glitches in the proxy's plan, the seeking organization takes it with the glitches. That's the limitation.

Ms Poole: I guess the other question I would have along this particular line of questioning -- I know I said it was the last question but it was really the last line of questioning I had -- relates to the proxy. There are a number of groups and individuals who've indicated that they feel this is going to be a fairly complicated method to implement. It does involve going outside with cross-employer comparisons, and they find the language confusing and they see bureaucratic difficulties in implementing it.

I'm wondering why the government didn't simply announce a wage enhancement grant to all these female job ghettos, if I may call them that, which were excluded from the original legislation. I asked this question to several of the presenters, including the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care. They weren't in favour of the wage enhancement as an alternative because they felt it was a matter of equity and they felt it was a matter of pay equity, so they didn't want to be given a handout. Mind you, I also got the impression that if they were handed a cheque tomorrow, they would gladly take it, but in their particular instance they felt that a method of pay equity would be more palatable.

I have some sympathy for their point, that it is a matter of justice and equity, but I'm just wondering if we are going to set up a system that, first of all, will be very costly; secondly, very complex; thirdly, difficult for the proxy groups to implement; and whether a wage enhancement program by regulation would not be a more controlled way of doing this without all the bureaucracy and just say, "These are the identified groups where their wages are very clearly below what they should be, and this is going to be the plan we have to get those wages up to a reasonable amount," similar to what was done in New Directions in 1987 with the direct operating grant for child care workers, and what has been continued with the wage enhancement grants under the NDP government, that type of thing, not only for the child care sector or some of the social service agencies but across the broad spectrum.

From the perspective of the Ministry of Labour, what reason was there to go to the proxy method as opposed to a wage enhancement scheme?

Mr Thomas: First of all, perhaps facetiously, I could say that in our scheme they're getting both. They're getting the down payment program that gives them the adjustment this year and then they move into the rights-based model.

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Ms Poole: Yes, but that's only because of the heat over the delay. It's called a government buyoff, but we won't get into the partisan part of that.

Mr Thomas: But that's only the first part of my answer too.

Ms Poole: Yes. Good; there had to be more.

Mr Thomas: Yes, I thought there should be.

If there's one thing I've learned in the last couple of years of dealing with pay equity, it is the notion of how important a rights-based system seems to be for people who are in the system. If there's one thing we heard in our consultations from virtually everybody, it was the importance of enshrining a rights-based system so that people would have (a) a definition of pay equity, (b) a certainty they could achieve pay equity with the appropriate organization or the appropriate group, and (c) a process of determining that within the workplace, between the workplace parties.

That's been the driving force behind trying to come up with schemes that will allow the 420,000 women who are shut out of pay equity in a job-to-job system to have access to the other two methods. My sense is that there was tremendous pressure and support from the consultations for a rights-based system that would extend pay equity into all females' places. So my sense is that if there's one thing I have learned in the last couple of years, watching this and being part of this, it is the strength of the commitment people have out there to wanting a rights-based system.

Yes, it is not easy to construct one. I believe the commission will be able to make it as easy as one can make it. But I think that was the tradeoff people recognized they were paying in order to get a legislative, rights-based system that isn't going to ultimately result in ad hoc increases here and there, under the guise of a down payment program, an enhancement program or a direct operating grant.

Ms Poole: I guess it is a matter of tradeoffs, because I'm a pragmatist and I say the end result is the bottom line. In the bottom line, if you can provide something more easily without the bureaucracy, without the complexity, without the organization involved, having to go through hoops to get it, and yet having the government phase it in over a number of years so that women see at the end of the line -- and not waiting 40 years but maybe a time line of 10 years -- they would realize certain levels without having gone through hoops to get it.

Mr Thomas: I see your argument. I just respond with the strength with which people out there have been arguing for a rights-based system.

Ms Poole: We'll agree to disagree on how the end result is achieved. Thank you very much. Those are my questions at this time.

Mr Arnott: I just want to sum up, I guess, this afternoon and say that I agree with Ms Poole's final comment most wholeheartedly, that in terms of --

Ms Poole: What's wrong with it?

Mr Arnott: No, I agree with it entirely. In terms of the exercise we've gone through to try to achieve what we call pay equity, it has been exceedingly bureaucratic and exceedingly complex. People don't understand it. If we, as a society or as a government, pointed to a problem and said that certain job classes are underpaid, it would have been far simpler, if the government had the will to do it, to increase grants or transfers to the agencies they wanted to increase the job salaries or wages. It would have been far simpler.

I guess when we look at the bottom line and the deficit in Ontario, that has to come into the equation as well. Yes, I agree with the deputy minister that these groups that have come forward in the week we had public hearings were strongly supportive of a rights-based system. But the reality is that the fiscal situation of the province has to come in as a consideration. Just because we haven't heard from the taxpayers on this, I think it's clear that they may be concerned.

For example, with the motion that I put forward this afternoon, which was defeated by the majority of the government members on the committee, with the exception of the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Labour, it appears that people don't want to even know what pay equity is going to cost. People don't want to see an aggregate figure. They don't want to know it.

Mr Wiseman: That's a misinterpretation of the vote.

Mr Arnott: That's the way I interpret it. I'd like to see an aggregate figure.

Mr Wiseman: You can misinterpret it any way you like, but that's a misinterpretation of the vote.

Mr Arnott: If the government members are supportive of the Ministry of Labour showing me an aggregate figure of what pay equity has cost since 1986, I'd still like to see it.

Mr Wiseman: That's still a misinterpretation of the vote.

The Acting Chair: Mr Wiseman, Mr Arnott has the floor.

Mr Arnott: Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms Poole: Madam Chair, may I make one other request?

The Acting Chair: Yes, Ms Poole.

Ms Poole: I just ask that notwithstanding any votes, if there are areas in which the Ministry of Labour or Treasury or Management Board can provide us with some figures, as requested in the original motion, we would very much appreciate receiving that information.

The Acting Chair: Are there any other questions? Seeing none, I adjourn this committee until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning.

The committee adjourned at 1557.