[ Page 10131 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Finance and Corporate Relations estimates. (Hon. Mr. Couvelier)

On vote 28: minister's office –– 10131

Ms. Marzari

Ms. Smallwood

Ms. Pullinger

Mr. Clark

Mrs. Boone

Ms. Cull

The House met at 10:03 a.m.

Prayers.

Orders of the Day

The House in Committee of Supply; Mr. Pelton in the chair.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF FINANCE
AND CORPORATE RELATIONS

On vote 28: minister's office, $329,702 (continued).

MS. MARZARI: Pay equity stands as one of your priorities in this year's budget speech and throne speech. The issue of pay equity has been discussed in this House over the past three years, but we have never specifically been able to zero in on the responsibilities, the definition, the management, the timeframes, the dollars involved....

MR. CLARK: Point of order, Mr. Chairman. I know it's the first thing in the morning, but we can't conduct business in the House with this kind of noise going on. I'd really appreciate it if you would call the House to order.

MR. CHAIRMAN: That's not a point of order, hon. member. But it is noisy, and I will call the House to order. The first member for Vancouver–Point Grey has the floor, and I would ask that we listen to what she has to say.

MS. MARZARI: Good going, Mr. Chairman.

The definitions of pay equity are heavy on our minds right now, because we know that this government is preparing a program that will ostensibly try or pretend to try to do something about the gap that exists between men and women's wages in our civil service.

We know, for example, that our province as a whole has suffered an increase of that wage gap over the past three years. We know that on average the Canadian wage gap is at about 35 cents to 40 cents on the dollar. We know that professional women suffer a lesser wage gap. We know that working-class women have a much greater wage gap, earning perhaps closer to 47 cents on the male dollar.

What we don't know and what we haven't yet pulled out of this government, if they, in fact, have the information, is a database to let the House, the province and women know what the wage gap is inside our administration, our own civil service. I want to put to the minister a series of questions which will start to probe the depth and the breadth of the database we have already developed to establish some kind of sense of who's responsible, who's on first, in terms of where pay equity is in this province.

Mr. Minister, I would ask you: who is on first? Who is in charge of pay equity in this province? Who is in charge of the database collection? Who is in charge of the actual pulling together of the program? Who is in charge of the negotiations with our major union, the BCGEU? How long are these negotiations anticipated to last? What systems of job evaluation do you intend to be using? What is your time-frame for the overall development of the program? And where in your budget is the allotment of dollars to begin to address the wage gap itself? Perhaps we can start there.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: The issue of pay equity is a key part of the government program for addressing this year. When we discussed it in the throne and budget speeches, the implication was that by virtue of the enormity of the task — and I sense by the tenor of the member's questions that she appreciates the enormity of the task — it will have to be a multi-year program.

We would anticipate that it will probably take us three or four years to get the program completely installed in all ministries. As we have announced, in classes that have principally been female job classes up until now, we are talking about paying employees the same as employees in the male job classes if the work performed is of equal value, even if it's not the same kind of work That is an issue that is very difficult to arrive at unilaterally, and must of necessity, in our judgment, include all the players in the exercise.

We are talking, obviously, about the need to include the union bargaining leaders or appointees in the process. We appreciate the fact that the chances of it being successful to the extent that we want it to be are enhanced if all of the players are willing, enthusiastic supporters. Certainly it's the government's intention to do that.

The task is one that will probably require discussions almost by specific job classification, which, once again, implies the need for going at it carefully and going at it in a cooperative, thorough manner.

I think I've covered the question of timing. I didn't make note of all of the questions. You put about ten or 15 of them in a string there. I can certainly assure the House that the program is seen by the government as being a key part of its endeavours for this fiscal period.

One of the questions related to who was the lead ministry. It's government's perception that the issue is of necessity a cross-ministry issue, focused and coordinated through the efforts of the Minister Responsible for Women's Programs (Hon. Mrs. Gran). The questioner was quite correct when she pointed out that some resource staff and maybe key resource staff are in my ministry, and obviously they will be key participants in the development of the program. You will find, I suspect, that many ministries will have an interest in the subject and be able to speak to it, but to your point about who's the lead, I think the Minister Responsible for Women's Programs could appropriately be seen as the lead.

It is important for you to understand how we are structuring or attempting to visit the structuring of

[ Page 10132 ]

future government operations. We have said repeatedly and publicly that more and more of the problems that government is expected to address are cross-ministry ones and will require almost a task force approach to dealing with them. We suspect that if we are going to maintain our relevancy to the people we serve and if we are going to continue to try to maintain a tight rein on the public purse, the expenditures of government, it would be more appropriate for us to take some of these cross-ministry issues and create task forces.

I suspect that you will see the pay equity program take on that form, where the minister in charge of women would be the chairman of the task force, all ministries and some senior staff members would be participants, and the role of the minister in charge of women would be to coordinate all those efforts and attach time-frames to their completion of specific tasks. In that process, obviously my technical staff — those charged with dealing with the union representatives, for example — would be key players in that exercise.

I think I have covered off most of your questions, hon. member.

[10:15]

MS. MARZARI: I don't think you covered them off, Mr. Minister; you nicely shunted them over to the shortstop, however, and I'd like to come back to them.

When I asked who's on first and got the response that it's going to be an integrated task force, I can't tell you how it almost warmed the cockles of my heart. It's wonderful to hear you chaps talk about integrated, coordinated and focused task forces. This has been a subject of debates and discussions in our own party about how we should be approaching the future. To think of senior management positions perhaps reporting to a minister or a group of ministers to get a task done for a limited period of time sounds great.

My problem, as is always my problem when I take a more serious look at many of your programs, is that it doesn't pan out. When you have integrated task forces at the top, very often they don't relate to the bottom at all. When you have integrated task forces at the bottom, as you tried to develop with your decentralization plans, nothing ever filtered up except through one funnel, which was your parliamentary secretary system.

No, you haven't had a good experience with interdisciplinary task forces, so I have to come back to my question: "Who's going to have the major say here?" It may be the minister of women who will be doing some of the coordinating and focusing and chairing the meetings. Who's going to be doing the actual negotiations? Who's drawing together the job evaluation schemes that might be used? Who is finally going to be signing the paycheque and determining how much money is going to go into it? Can I put those three specific questions to you? Because they, in my mind, determine who's on first.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: The issue of who's leading I think I've already addressed.

The member's comments about the difficulty associated with the creation of task forces I think is a valid one. I recognize the difficulties inherent in any attempt to restructure the traditional way of doing things. It will take a cooperative approach by all of the players to accomplish the objective.

The member says that she doubts our ability to deliver. Well, I can remember standing in this House and hearing hon. members opposite talk about their doubts that we could get the economy back on track, and we have. I can remember derogatory comments by the members opposite about our ability to endure a sales tax cut and still maintain the growth and program expenditures, and we've managed to do that. So I'm not surprised that you would have criticisms, and that you would be cynical. That's appropriate, given your lot in life across the floor. I have no difficulty standing before you and saying"Watch us." You will find that we will be delivering on this program because we are very serious about it.

You also had a question about funding. Obviously, because it's a cross-ministry issue, all of the dollar adjustments that might flow from implementation of the program will be contained in each line ministry's budget. We're not considering for a minute any suggestion that we would isolate these dollars somehow and put them in one subaccount.

Interjection.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: Why? Because what would that accomplish, Madam Member?

If I understand what the House likes to see, it is the cost of delivered programs. If we were to restructure our public accounts in a way that said pay equity costs this much, with no attention to what operations were being performed by those deliverers of service, you'd wind up with a mess of public accounts you wouldn't be able to verify or criticize. My heart goes out to you for the task you would have in criticizing such a mishmash of uninformative information.

We really want to help you do your job effectively, and the best way to do that, I think, would be to continue to provide you with a set of Public Accounts that lists the cost of providing a service, irrespective of whether there's pay equity involved and irrespective of whether that particular service is provided by more senior employees and therefore higher-cost employees, or whatever.

You will have an implementation process that proceeds with vigour this year. It will be a multi-year program before it's universally applied in government. The lead minister will be the Minister Responsible for Women's Programs. My senior staff will obviously be key participants.

There is a cost associated with this program. We have assumed the cost obligation because we are convinced its time has come. By virtue of our inability to address through the normal bargaining process the needs of lower-income employees, the fact we

[ Page 10133 ]

couldn't deliver the kind of equity we would like to have delivered through the bargaining process, clearly we must create a new program of government to address the issue. The record shows that we have made attempts to address this issue through the bargaining process and have had it rejected time after time.

When you're faced with the stonewall we've had, at the same time sensing the urgency around the issue and the need for fairness in the system, the only approach left open to us is to create this single issue — targeted responsibility — which we're very proud of initiating. Unlike other jurisdictions in Canada, where it has been less successful, we think we can make it successful in British Columbia because of our determination to do so and because of the lessons we've learned from the failures in other jurisdictions.

MS. MARZARI: Inherent in the minister's response are a number of comments that seem to lead this whole project to imminent disaster. They come from the minister's ignorance, I believe, of the nature of the program he is about to engage in. I just want to let him know that there has been difficulty at the bargaining table not because of a lack of willingness on the part of a predominantly female workforce to achieve equity in the labour market inside the administration, but because there are serious difficulties inherent in the whole process around pay equity as it has evolved on the North American continent. It is very complicated and difficult.

Let me tell you that by trying to fund the process through existing line ministries and not setting aside a specific amount of money and a specific time-frame, you're already letting yourself in for difficulty. I don't mean that it has to be an ironclad fund — I know the difficulty you have with funds — or an ironclad time-frame, because there have to be certain flexibilities. But the experience has been I picked this material up — and I would be glad to share it with you and the women's minister — at a pay equity conference three weeks ago in Toronto, held by York University and a judge in Ontario, who were trying to investigate their own legislated system of pay equity. It produced some excellent papers. I should tell you that out of the presentations and the papers there was a very strong exhortation to avoid the mistakes that have been made thus far in this country. And those mistakes, from some of the things you've already said, suggest to me that already you haven't got your database together and your information base together; that there's some stuff that needs to be done first. I don't want to stand here for the next two hours and outline what they should be. But I would like to think that perhaps you will have a symposium or a conference here in B.C., similar to the one that was just held in Ontario so that we can all start talking about this together.

You cannot bargain pay equity using money out of line ministries. It's important to set up a fund and a time-frame. And it's important to do a decent database right at the very beginning. It's important to negotiate not only the amount of money to be delivered into the hands of women but also the procedures and the processes by which that money will appear. And if you don't negotiate those processes, you'll end up on some of the sticky wickets that other provinces have found themselves on In the past few years. You need a separate fund. You need to review every job-evaluation scheme that exists before you end up rejecting 99.9 percent of them. You need to work with your employees and with the women to measure the wage gap that exists, and you need to throw out the bad models that exist now.

Women's work is undervalued in our society. It's very difficult to measure. Every statistic has shown us that whenever you try to measure the wage gap and then try to fill it, no pay equity program has actually breached that gap. Every program manages to close it by 7 to 15 percent, but no program has actually breached the gap. The best programs that have managed to come close to closing the gap are almost impossible to maintain, because they haven't been backed up by positive promotion programs for women, by affirmative action programs for women, or by decent training promotion access programs for women. So pay equity by itself will make you look good on the front page for one day, but very often six months later the gap will be wide again because COLA clauses, special perks and promotions once again start increasing it. The 40-cent wage gap between men and women perpetuates itself.

There are some real problems, and I think the minister should be aware of them. This morning, with my colleagues, I really want to find out; we want to pull the information out. So let me ask again: who is doing the negotiating? If those negotiators are from your ministry, what relationship do they have with the women's ministry? Who pays their salary? Who calls the tune? Are they suffering this terrible disease that I'm witnessing called "dual accountability?" Do they know who they're working for? Who's going to call the shots for them?

HON. MR. COUVELIER: I guess we're stuck with the consuming-time syndrome, Mr. Chairman; I thought I'd already dealt with that question. If it's a killing-the-clock exercise, then I guess I'll participate and help accomplish that objective.

The issue will be led by the ministry of women's programs. The staffing required will come from all ministries. They must all participate because they are all expected to deliver. Many of the resource staff will come from my ministry. The Minister Responsible for Women's Programs has the authority to force the issue, set the agendas, set the time-frames and challenge the respective line ministry staff on their performance or their failure to perform. The exercise is complex, as the member has noted, and we are certainly aware of that. That's why we're determined to approach it carefully and thoroughly, with an equal determination to make sure we get results.

I'm pleased that the member attended the conference in Ontario. I'm aware that there were many socialist adherents attending. That's helpful, and it should promote a greater understanding by the mem-

[ Page 10134 ]

bers opposite of the intricacies of the issue. Hopefully it might lead to a more useful participation in the discussion of the various options. The member might not be aware that we also had representatives at that conference, so we hardly need her-to share her files with us. All of that, of course, is available to us.

[10:30]

There it is. We're determined to proceed; we have a plan in place. There is an expectation in terms of time-frames. It will happen.

MS. SMALLWOOD: The Finance minister says maybe three years, maybe four years; the Minister Responsible for Women's Programs says two years. This is year one. You've got the ad out saying you've got the program. We want to hear some specifics. What's happening in year one? Who's doing it? Who is your target? How can we measure your success?

HON. MR. COUVELIER: Here we have a second speaker. The first speaker made comments recognizing the complexities of the issue. Here we have a second speaker charging into the fray with an expectation of having a game plan laid out in advance, autocratically, by a centralist mentality.

I often talk about the philosophical and ideological differences between thee and we. If ever there was another illustration of the fallacy of socialist thinking, it would be that government would sit here in its sanctity and its ivory tower and, before anybody else even had a comment, would present some kind of game plan for how the program would evolve. The first speaker conceded that the issue was complex. I pointed out that it would require the cooperation, support and generosity of heart of all of the players The first speaker made much for a good half an hour about the need to understand all of the complexities The fount of all wisdom evidently sits in her files, and she was prepared to share that with us.

Now the second speaker climbs to her feet and starts to request the total plan before anybody else has had a chance to make a contribution. I know that socialists think there are an elite few who have the brainpower to initiate this kind of program. I know that's where you come from. You believe that you are the anointed few who have all the wisdom. Whereas we on this side of the House believe with a conviction that the best decisions start at the grass roots, involve as many players as possible and are mutually arrived at in a spirit of cooperation.

If we were ever going to start a program with the determination to kill it, we would bring forward a plan exactly as you request, Madam Member. That would ensure the program would never get off the ground. This government does not have some sort of hidden agenda prepared in splendid isolation.

We have a determination to deal with a complex issue and to bring all of the participants together to arrive at solutions. We have a conviction that the time to do so is now, and we have provided adequate funding to accomplish that objective.

To suggest that before you consider the proposal seriously you want to see the outline prepared by some few in the ivory tower I find absurd. I'm really not surprised, because that is so typical of the centralist, elitist thinking that you see coming from the socialist side of the House almost every day.

It's disappointing to me to see that an issue as important as pay equity — fairness in the workplace — should once again get mired in this ideological confusion in the minds of the members opposite. It's truly unfortunate that we can't rise above our narrow little parochial viewpoints and make a useful contribution to the discussion.

All you really want to do is see the program killed. Nothing would please you more than to have it killed by this government. We're not going to make that mistake, Madam Member. You are not going to force us into making pre-emptive decisions on an issue as important as this. We are determined to involve everybody in the process and to give everyone an equal voice.

We are not prepared to come into the exercise with some predilection about how its outcome will be implemented. That plan will be developed by all participants in a cooperative, generous spirit. If you have any genuine desire to see the program succeed, your input and contribution would be appreciated. We don't happen to think we're the sole founts of wisdom, so if you have something useful to say, that would be helpful.

I don't happen to think that we should accede to your suggestion that the government sits here and brings forward some plan before anybody else has had a chance to contribute to its formulation, notwithstanding the fact that I suspect — were you ever to be in government — you would continue to push that socialist, centralist, elitist approach to solving problems.

MS. SMALLWOOD: That intervention was — I can't say informative — entertaining, because the fact of the matter is that the minister talks about ideologies, but pay equity is intervention. It is interventionist. It says that your system hasn't worked for women. It says that your laissez-faire, hands-off, let's-see-if-it-works attitude doesn't work, and that we do need to intervene. The government does have a role. Most clearly, with your own employees, you have not lived up to your commitment and responsibility to the women of this province.

You talk about how complicated it is, and how long it's going to take for you to implement a program. Yet you don't have a plan or a strategy. You talk about involving people, yet you are unable to identify for us that time-line, who's involved or how the process will go along, so that people can be assured they can have some say.

You talk about the rigid plan that we would implement. Quite frankly, Mr. Minister, we have been grappling with that problem. For you to make the kind of statements that you have about the people across Canada who have been struggling with payequity legislation and calling them socialists would suggest — only to me — that the people who were sent from your government to the conference In

[ Page 10135 ]

Ontario didn't come back with quite the right message.

The people who were there from across Canada, myself and my colleague included, were judges, lawyers and pay equity consultants — mostly people from the trade. They were people who make their living in implementing pay equity.

What we want to know from you, Mr. Minister, is how much this program is going to cost. Who's going to get the money? Is it going to be the lawyers and the consultants, or do you have some idea of who you want to benefit from your program, and how you are going to get that money to them?

Some simple numbers and some simple basic strategy suggestions from you. We're not asking for it in writing, step by step. Very clearly it's got to be an open and inclusive process, because no one person and no one group has the answer. But you have to have some idea about the program that you say you're committed to. The only indication.... We have two things before us: one, your failure to provide women with adequate wages; and two, an ad. Is that what this program is about? If you can't answer questions about your strategy and your plan, then we can do nothing more than deduce that this is only about an ad, that this is only about a face-saving mechanism for the Socreds.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: I saw the lips moving, but I didn't hear too much useful information coming out of them. The member seems to have made much of our alleged failure. The fact of the matter is that this is an international issue; there is unfairness in the workplace around the world. Government can hardly be expected to right all of the world's wrongs; some of them must lie with individual human behavior. Nevertheless, to suggest that the government has not attempted to deal with this issue is grossly incorrect and a misrepresentation of fact. It's not uncommon We all know that no one in this Legislature has to speak the truth; you can make any outrageous claims you like, and it gets repeated as if it were factual. That's truly unfortunate, but that's how the House operates. So you can get away with it

But just to put on the record the facts: during our wage negotiations with the unions over the years, we have consistently attempted to bottom-load the settlements. We were aware of the difficulty associated with many of the jobs held by females being inequitably paid. We've consistently attempted to bottom-load. The recent round of negotiations in 1988, if the member conveniently forgets, develops exactly such a program to bottom-load the settlement so that those at the lower end of the scale were getting addressed The member should know that that was rejected categorically by the union negotiators. As a consequence, government had to go back and redraft in order to get an agreement.

Once again, government found itself in the difficult position of having some people in their employment who — we felt very uncomfortable — were not getting a fair treatment in terms of their wage scales We have consistently tried to deal with that inequity through the bargaining process and have consistently been unable to get acceptance from the principally male-dominated negotiators. And it was that consistent failure to get the issue addressed — even though we were aware of the complexities of the problem of pay equity — that forced us to say: "We must deal with it; and if we can't deal with it through the negotiated bargaining process, then we'll have to implement a program of our own. We'll have to designate a lead ministry to lead it. We'll have to make sure that it applies across ministries in order to make the outcome successful." All of the players must feel equal participants, and all of the players must feel that they have the power to make the contribution they need in bringing their perception to it.

I say again, Mr. Chairman, we are determined to implement the program successfully. It will be a multi-year program. We have a lead minister who will be leading it. We have competent staff members who have researched well the existing literature on the subject and examined the practices In other jurisdictions. We have learned from those failures elsewhere. We are determined that we will not fail. We can devise a program that, with universal support, will enable us to address the issue. We all agree that the issue is there and must be dealt with.

[10:45]

MS. PULLINGER: Earlier today, the minister said he was not surprised that we're cynical on this side of the House about pay equity. Indeed, it's not surprising that we're cynical; it's not surprising that most women are cynical about the government's intentions. I would just like to point out a couple of things. For instance, as Vaughn Palmer pointed out, the first time pay equity came up in one of these budgets was in 1952. That's almost 40 years ago. We still have no pay equity. Last year in Hansard the member for Okanagan North (Hon. L. Hanson), who was the Minister of Labour at the time, said that he was aware of what was going on. Yet we hear the minister say that they're just beginning now. Last year, if I can quote, the minister said:

"As I told the members opposite and will repeat, we are aware of pay equity legislation. We are aware of what other jurisdictions are doing. We continually keep ourselves aware of what other jurisdictions do. I keep getting reports from my staff about how various things are working. We at this time do not intend to introduce any legislation."

That's what we heard last year. So it's not surprising that people are a little cynical.

Also, I just heard the minister blame trade unions for the problems. I heard the Minister Responsible for Women's Programs (Hon. Mrs. Gran) blame trade unions. Let's not forget that in the CUPE negotiations — not last year but the year before — the government's response to CUPE's request for pay equity in the contract was that they were philosophically opposed to pay equity. That was very clear. So it's no wonder people are a little cynical about it.

Obviously the minister's remarks make us very aware that they didn't have any kind of negotiable

[ Page 10136 ]

deal with trade unions, which is what bargaining is all about. They had a set of rules that they wanted to impose, and the unions weren't prepared to accept that. That's somewhat of an empty comment, if you like, without the context of those negotiations. I'd be most interested in seeing them.

The minister has admitted that there's unfairness in the workplace all around the world, yet your government has introduced Bill 19, which is, as you know, legislation that has been condemned by the International Labour Organization as unfair and oppressive. Let me remind you that that body is dominated by government and business — not labour.

This government has brought in unfair and oppressive labour legislation and, in essence, has undermined labour unions' abilities to function. Now we hear the Minister of Finance and the Minister Responsible for Women's Programs trashing labour unions and saying it's their fault that women are paid less.

I have just a couple of other things I'd like to remind the minister of. I notice the Minister Responsible for Women's Programs getting vocal over there, so I'll remind her too. Women are losing ground In British Columbia; in other parts of this country women are gaining. That's because they've had governments that have taken some responsibility, taken the lead and introduced pay equity legislation.

In Ontario, for instance, the gap is less than 30 percent. Here it's 39 percent and dropping under Social Credit, and you wonder why people are cynical. In 1900 women were paid 60 cents on the dollar; in 1990 women are paid 60 cents on the dollar in British Columbia. We are not doing well. Now you're telling us that you're going to look at it, and it's going to take four more years. Give me a break!

One more little item to explain why we're just a little cynical on this side of the House: the Minister Responsible for Women's Programs traveled around this province — probably using up most of the minuscule budget she has for women's programs - to listen to women's concerns. We've heard about....

HON. MRS. GRAN: Oh, shouldn't I have done that?

MS. PULLINGER: No, I'm not saying that. It was a good thing to do, and I'm pleased that you did it. I know that you heard about violence against women; there's an awful lot of it out there. I know you heard about the horrific inadequacy of child care out there; there are 60,000 kids without child care. I know you heard about poverty; there's a whole lot of poverty out there among women. This minister is wondering why we're....

HON. MR. COUVELIER: On a point of order, I thought we were talking about my estimates, more particularly the cost of running.... I'm hearing about violence against women and a variety of subjects which are totally outside the context of the issue at hand, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Minister. The minister does make a good point. Perhaps the second member for Nanaimo could confine herself to the estimates of the Ministry of Finance.

MS. PULLINGER: Certainly, Mr. Chairman. I was simply responding to the minister's comment that we were cynical. Given that we've seen a 40-year plan for pay equity and that the Minister Responsible for Women's Programs has offered the women of B.C. — with all those complex problems — three medals, it's not much wonder women are cynical.

I'd like to ask some questions just to see where the minister is going. Last year's debates showed very clearly that the government has been watching this for years. I wonder if the minister would tell me, for instance, what the wage gap is in the public sector in B.C. Could you tell me what the numbers are of women and men, proportionately, working in the public sector in British Columbia? Can you answer those two questions?

HON. MR. COUVELIER: The issue of a wage gap, which the member asked a question on, is something that many commentators have produced figures about. I'm not terribly impressed with that kind of data, infused as it is with the bias of the statistician.

The one issue that can be quantified without interpretation is the second question, which dealt with the mix of male and female in government service. I am advised that 55 percent of the workforce are females and about 45 percent are males.

Mr. Chairman, the member rambled and covered a lot of subjects. I don't intend to sully my copybook by getting into a lot of irrelevancies, but there was one comment she made that I found was such a misstatement of fact that I have to deal with it. She referred to Bill 19 and seemed to imply that it hasn't been a successful piece of legislation. Let me tell the House what the facts are, Mr. Chairman; just for the record, it would be useful.

MR. CLARK: Point of order, Mr. Chairman. I think we're dealing with Finance estimates here, not Labour estimates.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, and that goes two ways, hon. member. I'm sure the Minister of Finance is well aware of the requirement for relevancy in these debates.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: Well, Mr. Chairman, I am responding to an issue raised by a questioner, so in that context at least, I'm not introducing an irrelevancy that's new; I'm expressing a sensitivity to the curiosity of the member. Dealing with Bill 19, 1 think it's important for the record to show that prior to bringing it in, this province had lost three million man-days through work stoppage in 1986. We brought in Bill 19, and man-days lost fell to 500,000.

MR. CLARK: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I feel compelled to rise to defend the previous regime

[ Page 10137 ]

of the Bill Bennett government. This government is constantly attacking the Bennett administration for its policy on labour relations.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, please!

MS. SMALLWOOD: Point of order. I feel that it's necessary to rise and defend 51 percent of the population when the minister talks about loss of man-days. There are women working in this province, and especially with the issue we are discussing, this minister should be aware that there are women's workdays lost also.

MR. CHAIRMAN: It is with a great deal of trepidation that I would say to the member that that is not a point of order.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: just to finish the point Mr. Chairman, there were three million man-days lost prior to Bill 19; the next year, 500,000 man-days; the year after that, 400,000 man-days; and even the year following that, the year of the largest number of contracts to be settled in recent history of the province, something in the order of 600, 000 man-days. Bill 19 hasn't worked? Don't be absurd, Madam Member. Bill 19 has been an outstanding success.

MS. PULLINGER: I find it most interesting to listen to the government defend unfair and oppressive labour legislation. All that notwithstanding, the minister tells us that he has a plan in place and a time-line for this program. I wonder if he would like to elucidate a bit on that and tell us, for instance, how he plans to do job evaluation or if he plans to do it. Is there going to be a job evaluation plan? How do you see that working? What kind of program? Perhaps you've used one of the models; there are many of them around. I wonder if you've used Ontario's model, for instance, or another one. Can you answer that for me, please?

HON. MR. COUVELIER: One of the weaknesses of this process, Mr. Chairman, is something I've noted in previous years, which is that members in the opposition, for whatever reason, don't attend the whole discussion, and as a consequence, I have new faces walking into the chambers wanting to get their name in Hansard, I suppose, and repeating questions already put to me by previous questioners. I find it rather tedious that I should have to repeat myself incessantly. We're here to do the public's business. If the members have a genuine interest in the subject, I would have thought that at least they would have listened to the debate in the privacy of their offices — if they wished to smoke or whatever — and then they could have come in prepared to discuss or debate the issue without having to face the need of putting the same old questions on the record, as if they were some marvellous, new revelation peculiar to the member alone. The fact is that I have addressed those issues, so I invite the member to read the Blues if she's genuinely interested in the answers.

MS. PULLINGER: Just listening to the minister's patronizing ramble here, I was neither smoking nor was I in my office; I've been here all morning. I don't know where you've been, but I've been here all morning listening to this supercilious twaddle. You told us yourself that you have a plan in place. I'm simply asking you what that plan is. Surely if you have a plan and a time-line, you must know what that plan is. But it doesn't seem to be the case.

I refer back to cynicism: 1952 was the first plan you had, and we haven't seen anything yet. I think it may be like your federal counterparts the Conservatives' child care program that lasted only until an election. This looks suspiciously like it.

Perhaps you can tell me this much. What are your goals for this fiscal year that we're discussing? What do you plan to achieve by the end of this fiscal year, and what is the budget for that? Surely you must have some budget for this program. Surely you must have some goals for this program. If you don't know what the program is, can you tell me at least that much?

I will just wind up with the comment that obviously the government.... He says he has a plan and a time-line. Yet it has no goals; it has no budget; it has no specifics. Does it have any employees? One final question: are there any people designated to work on this pay equity program?

[11:00]

HON. MR. COUVELIER: We have 29,000 employees who are going to make this program work, Madam Member. Every employee in government is going to participate in its execution, and every employee in government is going to have an opportunity to address the issue with a generous heart and recognize the inequities that exist, recognize the government's determination to solve the problem and recognize that we do have a conviction that it's timely and necessary.

Are you trying to tell me that you don't want to see it proceed? What are you trying to say? Are you trying to say that once again, just as the other member commented, it's some sort of plan prepared in the ivory tower? Once again there's the socialist kind of mind-set, the narrow-minded little elitist approach that no one knows how to handle the problem better than you. Is that what you're saying?

Absolutely not; we will not enter this program with a determination to kill it. We're entering it with a determination to make it work. Every single employee of government is going to contribute to that solution.

MS. MARZARI: I'd hate anybody to think that the minister has just done a wrap-up of his position on this simply because he raised the decibel level of his voice. We've been talking about wage gaps, and I think I know where the gap exists right now, as I look around the House.

It's been particularly edifying to notice that the minister for women has been in the House. As she has been taking copious notes throughout this de-

[ Page 10138 ]

bate, I'm beginning to understand that she's perhaps getting as much information as we are, which might assist her as she develops her program and chairs her committee. We think we're doing you a favour, Madam Minister.

Listen, the first thing you've got to do — and this is advice not from the ivory tower here — is develop a database. You've got to count the number of women who actually work for the provincial civil service. While you're developing that database, it might be useful to at the same time count the number of women who work in the larger public sector. Start now including municipalities, school boards, libraries, hospitals and health care workers who don't receive a direct paycheque from the provincial government. Health care workers are in much more dire straits than most other women workers in our province. This is reflected across the country.

Develop a database, and when you've developed the database of who you've got working for the government, then take a look at the job classifications you have. It's entirely possible that you have very few female job classifications and a great number of male job classifications. This is one of the little lies that we live. The female work being devalued generally in society is very often lumped into huge job classes that run the gamut from unskilled to very highly skilled, all the five steps or seven steps lumped into one job class. Male job classifications are very tight, very conscripted, and very often use words like "responsible" or "accountable" or those other words that don't involve typing.

You have to start looking at those classes. You have to develop a base which shows how many women are in what kinds of classes and how many men are in other kinds of job classifications. Then, in the midst of your negotiations and with the people you're negotiating with, you have to start developing a new sense of what those classes should be looking like and start developing a sense of how large the gap is in work of equivalent value between those classes.

Then you have to go through the process of developing your comparators. With whom are you going to compare female workers in various kinds of jobs? Be very careful in selecting those male comparators, because we haven't done a very good job across this country thus far.

We can bottom-load to our heart's content. We can bump up the lower-paid salary classifications, because we all know they're filled with women. We all know that when we look at any job system, the bottom of the barrel is the women's jobs. We all know that women very often come in as very skilled and compare unfavourably with unskilled male jobs. We all know that outside male work is considered noble or dangerous somehow and therefore deserving of more money. And we all know that women's inside jobs are very often dangerous and very often related to nursing, caring, nurturing, food services or dealing with sick people. We know that those jobs are undervalued to the tune of sometimes 15 to 30 or 40 percent of what an outside male job might be worth. We know that.

We have to be careful what systems we choose, and then we have to pay out. That's the final stage, right? You've got to actually come up with some money. You've got to say to the women: "Here's your money. We're going to pay it out to you over four years; we're going to pay it out to you over two years." Then we've got to say: "And here's a way for you to stay in step with increments; here's an affirmative action program to make sure that you have equal access to jobs farther up the career ladder."

Mr. Minister, in going through this procedure as I've just done, I have not outlined an inflexible program. I have not laid anything out that says this is the way it must be done. Nothing I've said should threaten government, workers or anybody, but it could be the foundations for a plan. What our side of the House has been asking for is a plan. Tell us what your plan is — the broad, general nature of your plan.

Is it simply to send two men into a room with the BCGEU and say, "We're going to do pay equity, " or is your plan to walk into a room and say: "Here's an overall parameter, here's an envelope, and this is what we want to start to discuss"? Is your plan to say: "We've got four years to work on this, or two years to work on this; let's start now, and here are the people responsible to me; here are the people responsible to the women's minister to start working on a data base and a job comparison"? Or is your plan simply to say, "Okay, let's sit down, ten minutes later we'll bottom-load, whip off the bottom three classifications and we're away, " and call that pay equity?

We want to know what your plan is. Not down to the specific detail, not down to the last nitty-gritty, such as which typist is going to receive what compensation for her 13 years of seniority and five years of training. We want to know what your plan is.

Here are my questions, and I hope the minister will bring back some answers. Tell us about the database. Tell us what your numbers are. Tell us what women are in what positions. Tell us what your real time-frame is. Tell us what your real budgetis for your separate bargaining. It sounds to me like you're doing a separate bargaining on pay equity outside of the regular bargaining procedures. Tell us who those negotiators are.

I would be interested also in knowing if you're going to be looking at job classification, job evaluation mechanisms and what systems you're thinking of using. Are we developing our own, or are we using existing ones such as CUPE's, which seems to be reasonably valid?

Tell us the numbers in the larger public sector and what we're dealing with there in terms of health workers, library workers, hospital workers, municipal workers and school board workers. Give us those numbers as well, because that's the next logical step if we're doing pay equity.

[Mr. De Jong in the chair.]

We've got to influence the market. We're intervening in the market here and we have to take the first steps. I want to know what impact we're going to

[ Page 10139 ]

have on the overall labour market, because the public sector can't absorb the full costs. We have to ensure that we create a market economy in which women's work is properly valued, and we want to set an example for the private sector.

I want to look at what comparators you might be thinking about using and whether you want to use a wage-line model or another system as you move down the road towards pay equity.

Mr. Minister, these are the questions that I would like you to answer over the next few days — perhaps in writing. I would prefer it during the course of these estimates, because it's in the answering of these kinds of questions that we'll be able to see what you actually have in mind — whether or not it's an actual program or whether it's just simply another game of smoke and mirrors and a mere shell.

HON. MR. DIRKS: Mr. Chairman, I would ask leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

HON. MR. DIRKS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and for the indulgence of the House. It is so rare that I do get visitors from the great constituency of Nelson Creston coming all the way to Victoria, and I'm very honoured today to have 22 grade 5 and 6 students of a social studies class. It's the end-of-the-year visit from the W.E. Graham Elementary-Secondary School in Slocan City. It is a very interesting school, in that it was a participant in the Olympics of the Mind contest that was held in New Westminster. They actually went to the finals in the United States. It is a tremendous little school, and I would really like this House to give them a very sincere welcome to the precinct today.

MR. CLARK: The minister hasn't answered a lot of questions. Maybe we'll come back to them, but I'd like to try to talk about pay equity as well.

MR. LOVICK: It's everybody's concern.

MR. CLARK: It certainly is everybody's concern. I'd like to deal with it, if I can, in the absence of my usual derogatory remarks, and to try to elicit some Information from the minister. Maybe there will be some rhetoric after that.

The minister said they were 55 percent female and 45 percent male. Could the minister give me the number of full-time equivalents who are women and the number who are male?

HON. MR. COUVELIER: I'll let the member make the calculation. We've got about 29,000 FTEs.

MR. CLARK: It seems obvious to me that to embark on any pay equity program, the basic fact of.... I'm sure the average wage for the 55 percent who are women and the 45 percent who are men has been calculated. Could the minister tell the House what that is? What's the average wage for women and men in the public service? I realize that statistic is fraught with difficulty in terms of comparisons, but it is, generally speaking, commonplace through all of the studies. I'm sure it's been calculated. I'm interested in what it is.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: We don't have that with us, but we'll attempt to provide it to the member.

MR. CLARK: I appreciate that. The minister said: "We tried to negotiate this with the union and have failed. Therefore we have to do what we are now doing." I'm still not clear what that is. Any attempt to address the pay equity problem can be arrived at in a variety of ways. One way, of course — if the government is committed to it — is to bring it to the bargaining table and to try and negotiate it. That's the way the minister said was essentially not fruitful.

The more common way in the 1990s around North America — Minnesota, of course, is famous; Ontario and Manitoba — is to institute pay equity programs in the public sector first. Essentially that involves a job evaluation plan in order to try to quantify the value of certain jobs versus others. That's a very complex area. In fact, there's a growing industry with respect to it. We know there are pay equity offices in Ontario and Manitoba.

That doesn't appear to be contemplated by this administration. Maybe I could first ask the minister that question: is it being contemplated, or has it been decided, that there will be a pay equity office -as there is in Manitoba and Ontario, and in Minnesota and other states — to deal with the very technical question of job evaluation and the merits of certain jobs vis-à-vis others? Is that the direction this government sees being taken? Is that a step in the program the minister has alluded to given that the collective bargaining model has, to date, failed?

[11:15]

HON. MR. COUVELIER: I think I covered that in the earlier comments. There will be a dedicated task force charged with the responsibility of implementing the program and monitoring its effectiveness. It's the government's hope that the task force, when it has accomplished its task, could disband — the task having been achieved, and each line ministry subsequently being trained and enthused to ensure the program is maintained in subsequent years.

This refers to the comment I made to the very first questioner this morning, which is about the structure of government. I'm pleased to note from one of the earlier questioners that there is a perception that the traditional way of creating line ministries with narrow tasks was more relevant in times past and is less able to deal with so many of the issues that government is expected to deal with today, which are cross-ministry issues. The task of coordinating them is a big one, a serious one and a difficult one. We believe that this task-force mentality that you see exhibited in some of our funds in this budget year — and you see it exhibited with the Minister Responsi-

[ Page 10140 ]

ble for Women's Programs — will be implemented in a variety of those areas.

We don't see a specific ministry staffed with that narrow focus. We see the capturing of the ingenuity of many people in many ministries with a minister in charge and responsible for the performance and delivery.

MR. CLARK: We're getting closer, I think, Mr. Chairman. Can the minister explain whether one of the jobs of the task force will be to look at this question or to arrive at a job evaluation plan which would be utilized to access the wage gap, and then, of course, some kind of program to address it? I have no problem with a multi-disciplinary task force trying to deal with this complex problem, but I think I'd prefer a different approach. I understand the approach the government is taking. Will one of the jobs of the task force be to look at job evaluation? Is job evaluation a component of that? I'm not an expert in that field at all, and I defer to my colleagues who have done a lot more work, but it seems to me impossible to deal with inequities in any ministry or within the government as a whole without some kind of job evaluation to measure equal pay for work of equal value.

Lots of pioneering work has done around Canada and North America. Is it fair to say that the task force will be looking at some kind of point system job evaluation to try and come to grips with the wage gap in Individual ministries?

HON. MR. COUVELIER: Yes, quite clearly. The member is correct that that is a key part of the exercise. To the previous questioner, who alluded to the same point, discussions are ongoing — and have been for some time now — with the BCGEU representatives to initiate these general discussions to try to find comfort levels prior to any serious outline of a possible approach. Those discussions have been going on and are proceeding.

MR. CLARK: Is the task force then essentially seconding people from different ministries? It seems to me to be that this kind of question could be very properly dealt with in several ways, of course. I think it would make sense to have a separate unit with separate people because it's a particular kind of expertise. If government really wants to move on this, then it lends itself to a separate kind of exercise. However, the obvious area is government personnel services division of your ministry. Obviously they're the ones negotiating.

I wonder if you could give us a sense as to who is on the task force and whether or not it's a sort of secondment from other ministries, or whether the task force is really set up under government personnel services division working with a rotating group of people from the different ministries? As they go through one ministry, do they second people from that ministry and work it through, and then go to another ministry? I'm just trying to get a sense of how that's going to work.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: It's difficult for me to answer that question until we've done a little bit more jaw-boning with the union representatives. As I mentioned earlier, the chances of a successful implementation and successful outcome to a large extent depend on a cooperative approach. I've indicated to you that those discussions are ongoing. Once we get a comfort level with each other in terms of the degree of severity of the problem, it might well be that it is decided to take a ministry and deal with it first. Or it might well be that there's a decision made after we determine each other's comfort level, and we might make it a generic application across many ministries simultaneously. I don't want to predict that outcome.

I have a conviction that we have to depend upon cooperation here, and I'm not going to get it if I start pre-empting that decision-making process.

MRS. BOONE: I would just like to question the minister. I'm having a little difficulty understanding why you must have an interministerial or a cross-ministerial thing, because negotiations and the classifications are established on the whole B.C. government.

A clerk 3 is a clerk 3 regardless of whether that person is in Highways, Forestry or Social Services. A social worker is a social worker if they're in Health, Social Services or with court services. They have the same responsibilities, and they're paid according to their responsibilities. Those job descriptions already exist for each and every employee within the government.

Why is it then that when it comes to pay equity, suddenly you are taking it on a ministry-by-ministry basis and not dealing with them as government employees within the classifications they already have? Those classifications have been established for many years.

They've been in existence for many years and have been well worked through the process. There has been arbitration; things have gone through appeal processes for people to be reclassified and all of these different things. Why does the government suddenly now have to deal with things on a ministry-by-ministry basis?

HON. MR. COUVELIER: Mr. Chairman, I noted that the last questioner walked in in the midst of a previous answer, which I think was to the same question. It's possible that you heard only the latter part of it and made some assumptions; I don't know.

I'm confused by the tenor of your remarks and particularly the question. I don't see the relevancy here. It may arise from a comment made by an earlier questioner from your side of the House who talked about male positions and female positions. You may have heard that from the box in your office and assumed that that was the case; it is not the case. We don't have male positions and female positions. That identification by gender was abandoned something like 15 years ago, I understand. You're correct; we have positions. Some are dominated by females, others by males. This program, we hope, is targeted

[ Page 10141 ]

to ensure that there is equity in compensation for work of equal value.

There will be a cost. We've budgeted for the cost; we expect it. It's a multi-year program starting this year. We have no predictions for the program's formulation or whether we'll start on a ministry-by-ministry basis. I don't say we will; I just say that it's one of the possibilities. It could be that we take your suggestion and apply it generically. I'm saying that we won't know how to tackle the problem until we've got more comfort in dealing with some of the players. I mentioned that we are now and have been for some time in discussions with the classification group in the BCGEU, for example, to try to find where the comfort level is, because in my opinion it's critical that this be done cooperatively.

MRS. BOONE: I sat through several questions, and the question was by the previous member, and I heard the whole answer. You were talking about a cross-ministerial thing, and you mentioned in response to my colleague's question that you may deal with it on a ministry-by-ministry basis. My question is: why are we dealing with things on a ministry-by-ministry basis when the whole classification for the government employees is done on a government basis? A clerk 3 is a clerk 3, no matter which ministry they're in. Why do we have to deal with it by ministry by ministry? It appears to me that this is putting in another step, an obstacle, something that I don't think is necessary. We have Government Management Services. They deal every year with negotiations. Negotiations are done not on a ministry-by-ministry basis but on a total government basis. Why would you even be looking at dealing with things on a sectoral basis like this rather than looking at government services as a whole, which is how it's always been dealt with? Negotiations have always taken place on the basis of the whole government services and not on a piecemeal thing such as what you suggested might take place.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: That's an excellent point But I'm not saying that we would pursue a ministry-by-ministry approach; I'm saying that it's one of the possibilities, but not the only one. I'm saying that we don't want to make a decision as to how we approach this issue until we've got more comfort in terms of the willingness of the other participants to support it. The only reason I mentioned a possible ministry-by-ministry approach as a possibility is that it may be necessary to look upon a pilot project. It may be necessary to have a success somewhere to prove the efficacy of it.

I don't want to prejudge that, but you may well be right to suggest that a ministry-by-ministry approach would be ridiculous and not the appropriate way to go. I don't have any trouble agreeing with your point. It's fraught with difficulties. The whole issue is fraught with difficulties.

Until we have more conversations with the players, we don't want to predict which way we will approach it. Whichever way we approach it, it has to be supported by the players. We haven't got those comforts yet to know exactly how it will be done.

MR. CLARK: I understand, I think, the government's approach to this question. I'm not prejudging or taking this opportunity to attack it, but I want to say that there is no budget in the government for pay equity. It appears from the minister's comments, however well-intentioned, to be a very modest beginning to attack a very complex problem.

Clearly, under this approach, this is going to take four, five or six years. I think it is a fair criticism, if I can, to say that while the government has stated an intention to pursue pay equity, it is at this point nothing more than an intention and discussions with parties have begun. It is premature, in my view, for the government's advertising campaign to say that we have pay equity. It's premature for the government to be campaigning on this question.

[11:30]

It's very clear from the minister's comments that they have just begun to think about the process by which they might address this question. The minister has given us an idea and a task force. They are going to look at job evaluation, and they've started negotiations with the union. "When there's a degree of comfort," he says, "with the union and a degree of agreement" — I guess with respect to the wage gap — the procedure will take place. That seems to me to be a rather lengthy and slow beginning to addressing the pay equity program.

In that respect, I hope that during the coming election campaign we won't see the government take credit for pay equity programs which are not in place yet, but are in infancy. I give him credit for the fact that they're in infancy, that there appears to be for the first time some understanding that there is a problem.

But it is very early in the game yet, and it's clear by the minister's own admission that how the government proceeds has not been thought through yet. That may be appropriate, but they certainly haven't precluded all kinds of options available yet. Once the jawboning takes place — which could go on, I'm sure, for months — I presume there will be a process in place to start looking at the question of pay equity. It's a very modest beginning to addressing a very serious and longstanding problem in the public service.

My colleagues have a few comments that they'd like to make with respect to this issue, and I'll turn it over to them.

MS. SMALLWOOD: I've been listening to the last few speakers and quite frankly trying to make up my mind whether or not to put this observation on the record. I think that it's an important observation, and hopefully it will aid the government, and this minister in particular in the task ahead of him.

If the minister will recall the beginning of this debate about an hour and a half ago and the list of speakers from the opposition side that asked him questions, and the minister's response to those ques-

[ Page 10142 ]

tions, the minister's tone and the information that was either forthcoming or not forthcoming....

In that review I think something will become if not at least obvious, then at least curious. After three women members on the government side, or rather on the opposition side...

AN HON. MEMBER: Soon to be government side.

MS. SMALLWOOD: Soon to be government side.

...asked specific questions of the minister about the government's proposal — informed questions, questions that have arisen after a considerable amount of study in this area — the minister's response was less than forthcoming. It was fatuous at times, and it was condescending and patronizing at times. It wasn't until our male colleague got to his feet and asked the same questions that the minister was able to make commitments to provide information or to take those questions seriously. I would remind him that during our questioning, he accused us trying to wreck the program by asking those questions.

I would ask the minister to bring to the attention of his other colleagues, in working through this program of theirs on pay equity...to keep that in mind and to try sincerely to deal with the people he will face in trying to come to some resolution of this in an equal and equitable way; and to take those questions seriously and to listen to what women have to say. Because, quite frankly, they have a lot to contribute.

After the minister was reminded on a point of order that there are women working in this province, he completely ignored that intervention and continued to talk about the loss of man-hours. The minister continues to read and to have a conversation with his staff members. It's unfortunate. I don't suppose the world will change overnight, but the minister can be assured that there will be many women — and thankfully some men, too — working very hard to bring about some equity in the way people are treated in this province. The minister can choose to be part of trying to bring about that equity, or he can continue to treat men and women the way he did in this debate.

MRS. BOONE: Mr. Minister, I'd like to do a bit of questioning on an issue that is relevant to pay equity but slightly different. How can the government openly promote and talk about pay equity, and even pretend to be concerned about pay equity for women, when at the same time it is openly shifting toward contracting-out through temporary services?

In the past we used to have temporary contracts, auxiliaries, who were hired through the civil service commission — which is no longer around — or some of the other areas, and there was absolutely no contracting-out going out to other places such as Kelly Girl or Top Notch Personnel or what have you. These were all hired on an auxiliary basis, and they were paid full wages and given adequate pay for their jobs. Mr. Minister, we now see people being hired.... I'm sure the rates being paid to the companies are probably far superior to what they would be to a person hired on a one-to-one basis. But the actual dollars being transferred into the women's pockets — usually they are women — are substantially less than they would be if these people were hired through the government as auxiliary government employees. In fact, they are so substantially different that you can be hired as.... Six dollars an hour is sometimes what the employee would get, and the company would be banking a lot more of that.

How does this fit into the government's philosophy that women ought to be paid equally, that they ought to be paid a full amount so that their jobs are valued, when in fact we are shifting away from giving women fair pay for work — from giving women dollars — and over into the brackets of $6 an hour and actually promoting profits for companies rather than wages for women? How does the minister reconcile this philosophy, please?

HON. MR. COUVELIER: There are a number of changing operating styles. The dynamics in the workforce are constantly being amended. I suppose there is no greater driver of that momentum to change than the communications technology allances that have been made. The member is quite right. There is more and more contracted work being done outside government. There are a variety of aspects to that. First of all, this side of the House believes that we should do what we can to try to maintain the family as an integral, basic social unit. Technological advances in the communications field allow a lot of work to be done at home and electronically transmitted back to the contract issuer so that the employee or contractor is able to stay at home. That's a phenomenon....

Interjections.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: The members opposite express surprise. It's basic truth; you shouldn't be surprised. It's happened worldwide. There's an aspect of this contracting-out that captures that kind of dynamic. I can't quantify it for you. I don't know how we'd go about capturing a statistic that would tell you how many of our contractual relationships now relate to work that might heretofore have been done in an office sitting in front of a typewriter. There's a lot of it going on. We encourage it. We want to see more of it occur in the interest of trying to enable working women to stay at home with their families, if that's their option.

So that's an aspect to this contracting-out that I think is worth pointing out. You seem to suggest with the question that there was a preponderance of female positions contracted out, as opposed to male. I'm not sure that's justifiable. I suspect that if you took all of the positions contracted out by government, you would find that mostly it was men who were affected that way. So the basic assumption you start from may not be valid.

[ Page 10143 ]

MRS. BOONE: I think we've got a little bit of misunderstanding here. The question that I was talking about was not women.... I didn't even know that there were women doing these things at home. But if they are, why couldn't they be hired as auxiliaries and still be paid a fair government wage to do those things at home, Mr. Minister? You don't have to actually take them off the government payroll.

I'm talking about companies that instead of hiring an auxiliary for a particular office.... If you've got somebody on maternity leave, or if you have a vacancy and you need that position filled on a temporary basis, in the past you always hired an auxiliary employee. That employee was a government employee, was paid by the government and received the full amount.

Now what is happening more and more is that the government goes to a service such as Kelly Girl and says: "Supply me with a person for this job." The person is then paid only a small portion of the amount that goes out. The rest is given to the company. The company makes a profit; the employee is paid substandard wages.

The reality is, Mr. Minister, that you have people sitting side by side in offices doing exactly the same job and being paid entirely different amounts for it. How can you reconcile your stance that you want to encourage pay equity with the fact that you are actually encouraging the hiring of women at a lower pay scale?

The minister seems to not want to answer this. Are you going to reply to this, or were you getting some information there, Mr. Minister? Or were you just chatting to your deputy? Are you going to answer this question?

Interjection.

MRS. BOONE: No, I'm not....

MR. CHAIRMAN: Please address the Chair, hon. member.

[11:45]

MRS. BOONE: You talked about contracting-out and about keeping the family unit there. You said: "We want to encourage the family unit. We want people working at home." I'm not talking about people working at home. I didn't even know those people existed doing this typing or using their word processors at home.

I'm talking about people — women — sitting side by side in offices doing exactly the same work, one of them being paid a union wage as a government employee and the other one being paid by Kelly Girl or by an employment agency and receiving half the wage the other person is getting. The money that's being spent is not going into the pocket of the woman who's sitting there doing the work; it's only going partially into her pocket and partially into the pocket of the agency she's working for, thereby making profits for some company. The question is: how can you substantiate the continuation — and promotion of that type of policy, given that the government is trying to promote pay equity?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Before the minister answers the question, I would just like to point out a few things. Much of this debate has already occurred during the budget debate. Practically every member of the opposition spoke on that very subject. The minister has very clearly stated this morning that this involves all ministries, and he's trying to pull the ministries together to achieve the overall objective stated in the budget. The minister has never stated, nor does it state it in the budget, that the government is going to impose this on the private sector.

We're getting into a very fine line here between the private sector and the government. I believe that the subject has been very well canvassed and that perhaps we should look at other areas in vote 28.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: Mr. Chairman, your comments are certainly appropriate. But in an effort to satisfy the member, so she doesn't claim that we're arrogantly ignoring repeated questions, I'll say it once more. Maybe I'll attempt to paraphrase your comment.

The approach of this government has consistently been that we must start to recognize the problems of the taxpayer and that we must work as hard as we can to reduce the size of government and the intrusion of government into the private sector. If there are positions in government that are temporary in nature, it makes sense not to hire an employee to fill them, but to hire a temporary person to fill them.

Philosophically we start addressing the issue on different grounds than the socialists opposite. I can understand your desire to expand the public service and add more full-time equivalents, so that you have a larger and larger bureaucracy to continue to impose their will on the people who are paying the bill in the final analysis. I can understand that that's where you come from, but it should be evident by now, during these discussions over the last two hours, that we on this side of the House happen to think that it's government's responsibility to get out of people's affairs to the maximum extent possible. We have an obligation to maintain some level of social justice, and we attempt to do that with our various initiatives. But underlying this government's approach to managing these issues that you described is our determination not to build the bureaucracy any more than necessary.

I'm not surprised that we have private sector contractors in an office sitting next to a full-time equivalent, and I'm not surprised the pay scale would be different. The simple answer has to be that one is performing work that isn't judged to be of a permanent nature.

If you don't buy the thesis that government's job is not to increase the size of government, if you don't start from that ethic, then of course we'll never agree on the solutions.

[ Page 10144 ]

MRS. BOONE: I'm glad it's Thursday; I don't know if I could keep this up much longer.

Mr. Minister, we are not talking about increasing the size of government; we're talking about sustaining employment. We're talking about when a person leaves a job, and that job is filled on a temporary basis by somebody who is hired by an employment agency. We are not talking about reducing or increasing the cost to government.

The fact is, Mr. Minister, that it often costs more to contract those services out than it does to hire a person as a government employee, as an auxiliary employee. We're not talking full-time equivalents; we're talking auxiliary. "Auxiliary" means not fulltime. It means that as an auxiliary employee, the person who's hired is getting those full wages, and they're not going off into some private person's pocket to make them rich at the expense of the workers. That is what is happening, Mr. Minister.

You are not reducing the costs of government. You are merely shifting where the wealth goes. Rather than into the pockets of the workers, it's going into the pockets of some business that is promoting this. And the government is promoting this. At the same time as you are talking about pay equity, Mr. Minister, you are openly promoting contracting-out and paying people lower wages. That's your philosophy And if that is your philosophy — to pay people less to fill somebody else's pockets — then yes, we certainly do have...

MR. CHAIRMAN: Through the Chair, hon. member.

MRS. BOONE: ...differences of opinion, Mr. Minister — through you, Mr. Chairman.

The question here is: we want to see the dollars that are earned being put into the pockets of the people who earn them; we want to make sure that the people — and usually these are women who are working there, because, surprisingly enough, it is usually women who take maternity leave.... I say "usually" because there are some maternity leaves for men. But the fact is that we have got to make sure that this government understands it is speaking out of both sides of its mouth when it talks about pay equity for women. You can't talk about pay equity for women while at the same time you're promoting paying women less and less and less.

This has not been canvassed in any of the previous debates — in the budget debate, or any of those things. We did not talk about contracting-out, or about paying people less; we talked about pay equity We have never talked about this. This government does not understand that you can't say that you care about women, that you care about lower-income people, that you care about poverty in this province, when you're openly promoting paying people less and less.

HON. MIL COUVELIER: I now understand why those members of the socialist party opposite who are charged with criticism of the financial side of government are talking about a tax increase.

MS. CULL: We're not talking about the cost to government when we're talking about pay equity between two women who are sitting side by side in an office. We're talking about equity between those two individuals. I want to know from the minister how in the world he can talk about pay equity when all through the civil service we have auxiliary employees, who are members of the BCGEU earning BCGEU wages, sitting next to contract employees who are earning $5, $6 or $7 an hour — much less than the auxiliary employee. We are not talking about Kelly girls sitting next to full-time equivalents; we're talking about two systems for hiring temporary employees in this province. Some ministries hire auxiliaries, some use contract services and some use both at the same time. In some offices we have two people doing the same work, and both are temporary as defined by the government. Let me tell you that some of these temporary employees go on for months and months and sometimes years and years. We have two individuals sitting side by side doing the same work but making different pay. You can't come back and argue that one of those individuals is a full-time employee, because the people I want you to compare them to are the auxiliaries, who are also temporary.

So I would like to know how the minister is going to address pay equity for those women, when in fact we seem to have a system in government that encourages discrimination between classes of women — those who are hired by private contractors and those who are hired under the auspices of the Public Service Commission. That's the kind of unfairness that exists there right now. I'd like to hear from the minister how he is going to address that through a pay equity system.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: The last speaker, being a government employee herself, would probably be aware that this is an issue that has frequently been raised during bargaining negotiations. If she's not aware, she should be aware that there is a process dealing with alleged violations that incorporates the possibility of court action, and she probably should be aware that there are cases at the moment in that milieu. Presumably, if there is such a severe problem as she implies, the system that is in place will deal with it.

I've heard two different approaches. I've heard one speaker mention Kelly girls and others, and you say you're talking about a slightly different issue. My remarks were made to the Kelly Girl reference and the issue of whether government has an obligation to hire full-time employees for what it believes to be work of a temporary nature. Whether you call them Kelly Girls brought in from a private source or you call them auxiliaries, as you're saying, it seems to me that is just a spinoff of the same basic issue. Or is it government's obligation to provide work with fulltime status for which it does not foresee a continuing necessity?

[ Page 10145 ]

But as I say, that is an issue that is normally negotiated during a bargaining session, and if there are inequities that can't be resolved through the grievance process, then they wind up in a higher arena. I think that's the appropriate place for it rather than here in the House — particularly given the constraints that we have in dealing with issues that are before the courts.

In any event, Mr. Chairman, I notice that the lunch hour approaches, so I move the committee rise, report progress and agree to sit again.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

The committee, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Hon. Mrs. Gran moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 11:59 a.m.