HUMA Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATUS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

COMITÉ PERMANENT DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DES RESSOURCES HUMAINES ET DE LA CONDITION DES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, December 6, 2001

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[English]

The Chair (Mrs. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Ajax, Lib.)): I call to order the forty-third meeting of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

To our witnesses from the Human Rights Commission, I apologize for the delay. Those of us who serve the public as elected members are bound by bells. Hopefully there will not be any further disruption of our meeting.

We have with us today Nicole Chénier-Cullen, director general, employment equity branch; Joan Bishop, director, statistical analysis, employment equity branch; and Andrea White, legal counsel from CHRC legal services. Welcome to the committee.

You have between 10 and 15 minutes to make your initial presentation, and then we'll follow with a round of questioning. I don't know which one of you wants to start.

Madame Chénier-Cullen.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen (Director General, Employment Equity Branch, Canadian Human Rights Commission): I guess I'll start.

[Translation]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

[English]

I must begin by saying

[Translation]

that I read the transcription of last Tuesday's meeting to try to ensure that the session would be as productive as possible, because I know that members like to put questions. So I will make a few brief comments and be sure not to repeat too much of what you heard during the last session.

[English]

Do members have these two documents? It will make it really easy for everyone if you flip to page 24 in the framework document if you're French and page 22 if you're English. And in the annual report,

[Translation]

it's on page 2. Let me tell you what you have in front of you. I know that yesterday some questions were put about employers' obligations. The obligations of employers are not very clearly stated in the act. So, here they are. There are 12 of them. When an employer must implement a job equity program, he must put into practice these 12 statutory examples concerning the enforcement of a job equity plan. It is very brief. Here, it is very clear. Unfortunately, it is not as clear once it comes to enforcing them.

I will not dwell any more on this topic, because I know that my colleague Neil Gavigan discussed it at last Tuesday's meeting.

[English]

I'll just say that the 12 statutory requirements are really a reflection of a good employment equity plan. That's what an employer has to do, and that's what we verify when we go on place to do audits. The way we audit is described here on page 2. This is the audit process.

When we start an audit, our auditors operate like any other auditors. They go on site. They look at documents. They assess whether the employer is in compliance. The act is written in such a way that it allows employers who are not in compliance to achieve compliance during the audit. If the audit finds areas of non-compliance, we file undertakings with the employer and give the employer up to one year to achieve compliance with these 12 statutory requirements. We then go back and do a follow-up audit to check that it's been done. If it's done, the employer is deemed to be in compliance.

The act is kind of smart in three ways. It tells employers very clearly in the act what the employer does not have to do. The employer does not have to live with quotas, does not have to hire unqualified persons, and does not have to create new jobs to hire persons from designated groups. That's very clear in the act.

It's smart also because it gives the commission very clear marching orders as to how to conduct ourselves. This is very unusual for a piece of legislation.

[Translation]

But the act specifically states how we will proceed.

[English]

There's a guiding principle elaborated in subsection 22(2), which clearly states that “wherever possible, cases of non-compliance be resolved through persuasion and the negotiation of written undertakings”, and enforcement action will be taken only as a last resort.

So those are our marching orders at the commission: we use persuasion and cooperation with the employer.

The act is smart because it does not expect employers to be in compliance. I think that's probably at the very basis of the excellent cooperation we've been getting from employers since we started the audit mandate.

It's a smart act, but sometimes it can be a frustrating act, because it takes up to three years before we can find an employer in compliance—which is a long time, and I'll tell you why when I take your questions on that.

Would you like to ask me questions up to this point, or...?

An hon. member: I think we have a lot of questions.

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Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Good. But I also have some very interesting figures I could give you.

The Chair: It might help. How much longer do you have in your presentation? It sometimes is more helpful if you complete the presentation and then we have the questions.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Let me tell you how many audits we've had and what we've learned. I could also give you a very short aperçu of the kinds of changes we might recommend in the act. It's preliminary information, but we're at the point where we have learned enough through four years of administering audits that we can have a good indication of what types of changes we would like in the act.

In terms of where we're at,

[Translation]

we audited about 215 employers. This stands for 50% of the employers subject to the act, but it also stands for 80% of the employees. For the public service, which is subject to the act, this covers 99% of public servants. We are currently covering 82% of private sector employees, including transportation and communication companies, banks and museums, companies of that nature. This also includes 43% of the employees of what we call the separate agencies such as the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency.

Up to now, after four years, 73 employers are in compliance. Only 8 of these were in compliance during the first phase of the audit. This is why it was very important for us to negotiate commitments with the employer so he could be in compliance. Thus, we did 371 audits of 200 employers and, as I said earlier, we need three years on the average before finding an employer in compliance. When we went back for a second audit, we noted that 80% of employers were in compliance, which to us is a very acceptable rate of compliance.

With regard to the system of law enforcement shown on your chart in the annual report, we noted the cases where employers did not cooperate. If an employer has not respected his commitments or refused to commit himself, the commission can issue a direction. The employer is given some more time to comply and if there is no compliance by then, we can refer the case to court.

Up to now, we sent directions out in 20 cases. Five of these 20 cases were referred to court. We have not had a trial yet because while awaiting the trial, employers begin to work and to comply. Among the 20 cases for which we sent out a direction, five have complied since then.

[English]

To summarize, in administering our mandate, we've tried to adopt a realistic strategy to what is essentially a very complex program. We set aside bureaucratic complexities in favour of clear, logical approaches. We try to apply the requirements of the act in a fair, flexible, but firm manner, and in the end to do what is right for employers and designated groups alike.

I'd like to say we try to apply the three “f's” approach—firm, fair, and flexible. The fact that we can work with the employer to achieve compliance is also, I think, at the base of why we've had so much cooperation, and it's made it a much more productive process so far, although frustratingly long.

In terms of reviewing the act, we have asked for an independent evaluation of our program. We've sent out a survey to the 175 employers we have audited. It's done by Consulting and Audit Canada. We are going to hold interviews with our counterparts at HRDC and Treasury Board, where we have a very strong relationship, and that again is to the betterment of the program as well. The organization that's doing the audit of our program will be interviewing consultants. We'll look at how the process has been working, where we could reinforce our process, and whether we're getting results.

For us, though, the real result will come when we can see whether or not employers are making progress in closing the gaps for designated groups in their workforce. How do we do that? That is a critical part of our approach.

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After an employer is in compliance, we have their goals, their employment equity plan. Once they report to HRDC and Treasury Board where they are, we will take their report, look at how they're performing against their goals, and if there's no reasonable progress, we'll go back and do another audit. So that is going to be a very critical element of the program, which will kick in in 2002, because an employer has to be in compliance for more than a year before we can even start looking at the goals, and the goals are usually given to us for a three-year period.

In terms of reviewing the act, we will have some preliminary results from our audit very soon. They will be very useful to us in terms of giving the committee information as to the findings and where we can reinforce our processes, what's working and what's not working.

We also will be holding consultations on some of the areas in the act we want to see strengthened, but on the basis of our four years of experience with the audit process, we have a pretty good idea right now of where we would like to go with recommendations to change the act.

We would not be recommending fundamental changes at this time, because we don't know whether or not we've been effective in enabling employers to progress in the representation of designated groups in the workforce. If they aren't making any progress, it will be for one of two reasons: either we haven't done the audits properly—and that's not going to happen—or the act doesn't allow us to go far enough. But it's just a little too early for us now.

At this point, we would like to see the statutory requirements enshrined in the act in a much clearer way. The act is totally silent on the issue of accessibility. It's silent on the issue of accountability. It needs to give employers a much clearer indication of what we mean in terms of hiring goals, for instance. It's not sufficient to have hiring goals that are below availability. We need a clearer picture of the issue of accommodation.

The kinds of changes we would like to see are all related to issues of that type. It's a little early. We don't want to pre-empt the consultations we're going to be having with groups, stakeholders, and partners, but that's the way we see the picture developing at this stage.

I guess that's it. We'll now be pleased to take questions.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

We'll start our first round of questioning with Mr. Johnston.

Mr. Dale Johnston (Wetaskiwin, Canadian Alliance): Thank you very much.

The Chair: You have about ten minutes.

Mr. Dale Johnston: Thank you, Madam Chair. Will there be more than one round?

The Chair: I'm hoping so. Yes, there should be.

Mr. Dale Johnston: Okay, then I intend to share my time with some of my colleagues.

First of all, thank you, ladies, for making your presentation today. I was a little confused, though, by one of the statements I thought you made. Correct me if I misunderstood, but I thought you said the act is very wise because it does not tell an employer he has to be in compliance. If the act doesn't tell an employer he has to be in compliance, how can you exercise any enforcement?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: In the first stage of the audit, if the employer is not in compliance, the act allows for that to happen. The act tells us quite rightly that we have to negotiate undertakings at that time. Anything less would mean we would be in enforcement mode for all the audits we do, and that has to be prevented because then we wouldn't get any positive results.

We do a first audit. If we see the employer has not done the 12 steps required to lead to a good employment equity plan.... Most employers are partially compliant. Most employers have done a workforce survey. If they're not in compliance with that, that's when we have to turn around and negotiate undertakings with the employer. We tell the employer very clearly what he needs to do to achieve compliance with the act.

The employer then has the opportunity to come back and negotiate these undertakings with us. When the employer signs the undertakings—it has to be signed by the CEO or the deputy minister, so the report has the full commitment of senior management—then we leave that employer alone for a period of up to one year so he can implement those undertakings. Then we go and do another audit. At that point the employer has to be in compliance, and that's when, if the employer is not in compliance, we can go back and issue a direction, which leads to tribunal.

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Mr. Dale Johnston: Does compliance mean having a plan in place then? Let me give you an example. A contracting company that hasn't normally been doing business with the federal government gets a contract with the federal government. Basically, one group of people works for them and they don't have the quotas represented here—they're from various groups—on their normal workforce. Since in a year's time they have to be compliant with this program, does that mean that if this contract lasts more than a year they have to get rid of some of the employees they have and bring in employees from other groups so that they are compliant? Does it mean they have to actually rid themselves of some of their present employees and get some others?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Absolutely not. That's why the act is very clear in telling employers what they do not have to do. They do not have to create new jobs to hire people from the designated groups and we do not impose quotas. That's very clear in the act.

In terms of the federal contractors program, the audits are conducted by HRDC. And it's a cabinet document, although the procedures underlying that program have to be equivalent to ours.

It wouldn't mean that at all. It means the employer is given a year by which to implement an employment equity program.

There are two types of compliance. If the employer is not fully represented in terms of the designated groups in his workforce, the employer has to do these 12 steps, which are to be found on pages 22 to 24 in your framework document. Once those 12 steps are implemented, that is one form of compliance. Then the employer starts implementing the plan.

If the employer is fully represented, he doesn't have to do the 12 steps but has to agree that.... Then the employer is in compliance with the act. There are two kinds of compliance. One, you have to have the plan in place to enable you to achieve full representation. Two, if you're fully represented then you still have to monitor in order to ensure that you maintain that representation and are able to know at all times what the representation in your workforce is.

So no quotas, no firing anybody to hire members from designated groups, and, yes, compliance is two things: the 12 steps, and once you've done that, you're in compliance; or you are fully represented, in which case you are in compliance.

Mr. Dale Johnston: The Canadian Human Rights Commission has been designated as the enforcement body. Does that mean you have to hire compliance officers? What are their powers? This is a quasi-judicial body. Do they have all the powers to enforce the act?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: That's right. We have the equivalent of 15 auditors—3 audit supervisors and 12 auditors. We also have a statistical analysis unit in our branch to enable us to give good information to employers on that part of the program, which is a complex part of the program. Yes, the auditors' responsibilities are recognized in the act and the employers do have to submit to them the documentation they need in order to do their work.

Mr. Dale Johnston: One last question. To me, a tribunal means there should be three people, but I understand that's not necessarily the case. I understand from the act that it could be one person.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: The tribunal is separate from the commission. We haven't had a tribunal yet.

It's kind of both frustrating and satisfying in a way to see how the enforcement process has worked thus far. We have not had a tribunal yet, mostly because from the time we've issued the direction and then referred it to a tribunal the employers have come into compliance. Therefore, there's no reason for the tribunal. It has acted as a catalyst for employers to really start doing something. Only 20% of the employers have gone through this enforcement process.

Whether the tribunal is three persons or one person, I am not clear on that at this stage.

Mr. Dale Johnston: My final question would be about this sort of affirmative action policy. Is it more or less in line with what's happening in the rest of the provinces and Canada?

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Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: The only other province that has a very comprehensive approach to the program is Quebec. In the other provinces, I believe it's done through the Human Rights Act. It's not as comprehensive an approach as we have so far.

In our approach we spend an awful lot of our time briefing provinces and briefing other countries as to how our approach works. Last year the Government of Belgium invited our director of policy to go to Belgium, at their cost, to brief the minister and the cabinet and the government on the approach we're taking. We brief other countries all the time. Our approach is a good one in terms of being done in a cooperative way, a persuasive way, and that is creating the positive climate in which you need to operate when you're trying to put in place a program like employment equity.

Mr. Dale Johnston: If I have any time left, Madam Chair, I'd like to defer to my colleagues.

The Chair: We'll get to your colleagues in another round. I think we'll make it.

Mr. Dale Johnston: Okay.

The Chair: Mr. Tonks.

Mr. Alan Tonks (York South—Weston, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

If there is an order taken against an employer after an investigation has been held—and I assume the investigation compares the record of the firm against its employment equity plan—is there a timeframe with respect to...? I'm not talking about targets, but I'm talking about representations of visible minorities, let's say, and they in their plan have said their targets are such and such and these become a matter of public record. If there is then a complaint, is the plan binding? In other words, the person who is making the complaint—and I would think they're making it against the public declaration that the corporation has made that it will attempt to have these representations in its workforce by certain particular dates. Is that a binding prerequisite, or are they merely thresholds and goals and so on?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: I wish I had brought my PowerPoint presentation and spent an hour with the committee just telling you how this system works.

The Chair: Just how it works, that's right.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Yes.

We don't do an investigation. For us as auditors it's very important that we separate that part of the commission from our part of the commission. The investigations are done by the operations branch—and that's something totally different—based on complaints. It's an adversarial concept. The audits are done, not based on complaints but in a cooperative, persuasive manner. The investigation side of the commission does not have access to the information from the employment equity audits. That's totally different.

On the issue of employment equity, you would not do an audit based on a complaint. We know we have 415 organizations in the pool of employers. We select at random who we're going to audit next. So it has nothing to do with complaints.

I'm going to be careful how I say this. The act says, quite properly, that the documentation we receive and the reports we submit to the employer are confidential documents. Yet we're subject to the Access to Information Act. If a person wants to have access to a report from the audit they can get it through Access to Information. So not even the other side of the commission has access to these documents.

However, there is something in the act that says that if a person launches a complaint and an audit has been conducted and the organization is in compliance with the employment equity plan, and the commission feels that through the audit the complaint has been settled, they could make a decision based on the results of the audit at that point. But it would be on the positive side.

Mr. Alan Tonks: I see.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: It's totally separate from investigations and audits.

Ms. Andrea White (Legal Counsel, CHRC Legal Services, Canadian Human Rights Commission): Just to clarify, Mr. Tonks, the Canadian Human Rights Commission is established by the Canadian Human Rights Act. We wear the hat of investigator and litigator and other hats under the Canadian Human Rights Act, and then we're given the role under the Employment Equity Act of enforcing the obligations. They're really like two cousin pieces of legislation, and the commission has different roles depending on what the legislation is.

Mr. Alan Tonks: Right.

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Madam Chairman, I think that at some point, for new members, the benefit of having that kind of an overview would be.... I would look forward to that.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: [Inaudible—Editor]...take you through the whole audit process, if you can put two hours aside just to see how the program operates from our perspective. You could see the results we've been getting, the problems we've been seeing, and examples of good and bad practices. I would be very pleased to do that.

The Chair: I think the clerk will be in touch with you. I think that's something the committee would very much enjoy seeing.

Mr. Alan Tonks: As to the whole notion of judicial review, on the heels of what you've said, what is it that is subject to judicial review with respect to an employment equity plan?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Judicial review is something different. An employer could say, okay, I haven't been handled fairly; therefore, I'm asking for a judicial review of the process.

Are you asking in terms of our enforcement mechanism in the act?

Mr. Alan Tonks: That too, but if I could, I'll just back up. In terms of judicial review, let's say an employer has been audited, there are provisions of their employment equity plan that have been scoped by you, and you find that they are deficient in a particular way. Is that how it works?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Yes—

Mr. Alan Tonks: Is it that aspect of a decision that is subject to judicial review, or can it just be the process by which you have undertaken your audit? Can that be reviewed by...?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: It could be both. In terms of the way we do the audits, if we go to an employer and the employer's plan is deficient in many ways, we'll first negotiate with that employer on how he can improve the plan to put it into compliance with the act. That's done totally through negotiation. Then we say, this is what you need to do to be in compliance; sign here on this report to say you're going to do that. Then we close the file, we go away for up to a year, and we come back. Only if that employer hasn't done what he agreed to do in the first place would the enforcement kick in.

Judicial review is maybe something Andrea would like to address.

Ms. Andrea White: There is recourse to judicial review by virtue of the fact that the commission is an administrative body under the Federal Court Act, but there would only be a recourse to judicial review after the recourses that are set out in the Employment Equity Act have been exhausted.

The procedure under the Employment Equity Act is, as Nicole has mentioned, a very persuasive collaborative procedure. The first thing that happens is that undertakings are negotiated with an employer if it is found by the commission that the employer isn't in compliance. At any stage of the commission's decision-making, when it's negotiating the undertakings with the employer or when it proceeds to the following stages, the decisions are potentially subject to judicial review. The first thing that would happen is the employer would negotiate with the commission to develop undertakings. After that, they would be executed, presuming that the undertakings by the employer are agreed to by the commission. All parties would sign the undertakings.

If the undertakings are not complied with by the employer within a certain time, the commission may decide to issue a direction, which is the second stage in our enforcement process. Again, we're not a place where a person might have recourse to judicial review because we're still going through the recourse procedures in the act.

The next stage is an issuance of a direction by the commission, which will say to the employer, you must do the following things in the following amount of time. If an employer has a problem with that direction, if it doesn't like what the commission has said it has to do, if it feels the commission has acted outside its scope of authority, or if it doesn't like the deadlines it's been given, it has 60 days to apply to the Employment Equity Review Tribunal for a review of that direction. That's the first recourse, rather than judicial review, an employer might have.

Similarly, if the commission finds later that the direction has not been complied with, then it can itself ask the Employment Equity Review Tribunal to confirm the direction and to give an order to the employer to do something.

It is only after these processes have been exhausted that there might be judicial review. No case has yet gotten to the Employment Equity Review Tribunal because we've been in the direction stages or in the application to the tribunal stages. However, let's say we got to the tribunal and an order were given by the tribunal telling the employer to do something by a certain day or varying a direction by the commission. At that stage, if the commission or the employer weren't happy with the tribunal decision, there would also be recourse to judicial review of the tribunal's decision because it too is an administrative body under the Federal Court Act.

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Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: You can tell she's all lawyer, right?

We'll bend over backwards to enable employers to achieve compliance. Let me give you an example. One employer we had was a small organization and, in an economic downturn, did everything they could; they showed a lot of good faith but did not feel they were in a position to give us hiring and promotion goals because of that economic downturn. We didn't require it. We said, okay, we'll close the file for a year; come back next year and see if you're in a position to do that. It happened. So there are a lot of ways we can persuade employers to achieve compliance. Enforcement is a last resort.

[Translation]

The Chair: Ms. Guay.

Ms. Monique Guay (Laurentides, BQ): Good day, ladies. Welcome to the committee.

Ms. Chénier, I have several questions. I think your presentation will be much appreciated because the enforcement of this act seems complicated indeed.

Just now you said that the act has existed for five years and that you have met 215 employers. If I understand, you have not yet had the time to see all the employers.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: No.

Ms. Monique Guay: Is this because you did not have enough personnel or because there are not enough people in place to enforce the act?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Of course, if we had more auditors, we could do more audits. But because each case needs two or three audits, the burden on the auditors is increasing.

Ms. Monique Guay: We received the annual report for the year 2000 on the Employment Equity Act at the last committee meeting. I also mentioned that if we look at categories like Aboriginal women, people with disabilities and members of visible minorities, we see that no real progress has been made for five years. There is still a large amount of work to do.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Absolutely, especially for persons with disabilities. I thought that everyone knew this. Before the new act came into force, no one ever went to see employers to ensure that they were doing what they had to do. When the new act came into force, we saw that employers would not do anything unless we went to audit them. This is exactly what... [Editor's Note: Inaudible].

Let me emphasize that even if only 215 employers were audited, these are big employers who cover 80% of our objective.

Ms. Monique Guay: Employees.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Yes. When we saw how much time audits took, we decided... [Editor's Note: Inaudible]. When launching a new program like that one, there are many things to learn. There are different ways of doing things. Once we were comfortable with the auditing process and we saw that it worked, we audited all the big organizations. Right now, all the big companies are subject to audits. We will still have to do audits of small organizations that cover 20% of the workforce and for whom we'll try to simplify the process.

Ms. Monique Guay: You also said that eight of them were in compliance and five were before the courts. When I asked this question of the people in charge of enforcing the act, the told me that no case had yet gone all the way to the end of the process in court. I find it rather abnormal that not a single case has gone all the way to the end in five years.

Could it be because we do not have all the tools to bring them that far? I wondered whether we could penalize an employer who is not doing his duty and not respecting the law. I was told that we could impose a fine from $10,000 to $50,000, but that this has not been done for five years. I find that a bit worrisome.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: This is a frustrating part of the act. It will take time. On the other hand, we must understand that eight employers were compliant during the first phase of the audit.

Ms. Monique Guay: Yes.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: If all the companies had been in compliance during the first phase of the audit, we would have done all the employers by now. If we did not give the employer the possibility of negotiating commitments so as to become compliant, we would be in court all the time.

Ms. Monique Guay: That is not what I mean. I think that we must give the employer a chance to comply—

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: The process is very long.

Ms. Monique Guay: ... but after five years, if he has not complied, Madam, we have to react.

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Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Yes. We issued directions to 20 employers. They complied. Five complied and five were referred to court. It takes time to get a date for a trial. During that time, the employer continues to work on his compliance. This explains what I said earlier about court proceedings.

Ms. Monique Guay: We are talking about employers, but if I belong to a minority, and I apply for a job in a company and I am refused, can I complain under this act?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: It would be under the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Ms. Monique Guay: And how do you react in such a case?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: It is a complaint—

Ms. Monique Guay: It is another file.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: We do an investigation. This has nothing to do with the process—[Editor's Note: Inaudible]

Ms. Monique Guay: Is it fast enough?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: It is very restricted. We're only dealing with one person's problem. When we do audits, the entire workforce is involved and benefits from the methods we implement.

Ms. Monique Guay: I am anxious to hear a presentation, because I wonder how you can enforce the act with regard to human rights. We really need to have the details to understand the implications of this act.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Yes, it is very complicated. The act is not really clear about what the employer must do. The employer also finds it very difficult to understand exactly what he has to do.

Ms. Monique Guay: Yes, and we should clarify these things. If you have any amendments to suggest, I would very much appreciate your putting them in writing. You could give them to the clerk. We will be hearing many witnesses after mid-January.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Absolutely. We will have a document for you about improvements to the act we would like to recommend. In January, we will certainly have a document for you. It will also be based on the results of the audit of our own program—what works and what doesn't work so well—and the consultations we will do.

Ms. Monique Guay: Have you any problems with provinces who do not have an employment equity act? We have one in Quebec and it is being widely promoted. Besides, it was publicized during the entire month of November. The message was that everyone had a right to a job. This is very beneficial and works well. In provinces which do not have such an act, is there any problem with enforcing the federal act in companies under federal jurisdiction?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: We had no problem with that. The two are hardly connected at all. Our organizations are federal organizations. Banks are—

Ms. Monique Guay: Would it be better to also have provincial legislation?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Yes, absolutely.

Ms. Monique Guay: That would make things fairer.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: [Editor's Note: Inaudible]... Ontario abrogated its act, they had made much progress. Even some employers were disappointed by this.

We worked a great deal with Quebec, because Quebec also has an act. When they brought... [Editor's Note: Inaudible], ... we also shared our auditing experience with them.

Ms. Monique Guay: Thus, it is an opportunity for us to get coordinated.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Yes, absolutely. We must work together because our objective is to make employers comply.

Why has no progress been made up to now? It is above all because employers did not know how to go about it. We must look at this as a research project. It is all very well to hire Aboriginal people and people from visible minorities, but if an organization has not eliminated the obstacles that stop them from developing or progressing and cause problems, we will not keep those employees.

The employer must begin by defining his problems and the means to get rid of them. He must implement positive practices to reach his objectives. These steps are very clear when we look at this as a research project, but when we try to analyse the act, the opposite is true.

Ms. Monique Guay: I think that we must give employers clear timelines when we ask them to comply with the act. Even if we gave them time to establish employment equity in their company, they would still need very clear timelines to become compliant, otherwise things can drag on forever.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: That is what we try to get by producing reports. We tell them very clearly what they must do. Let me give you an example. At the beginning of the program, we had problems with some employers. When the audit is finished, the file is closed for a maximum period of one year and the employer does what he has to do. Human Resources Development Canada and my colleagues help them understand how to do the job. Employers do not all go to HRDC. Often, when employers came back to see us, we would reopen the audit and realize that the second step, the workforce analysis, had not been properly done. If it is not properly done, the subsequent steps will not be properly done either. So we coordinated our procedures. We gave the employer a deadline for the workforce analysis and we asked him to send us the analysis right away so we could see whether it was compliant, and the employer could then go ahead and implement his plan. This is one of the flexible elements that can be used in our program if there are problems.

• 1210

Ms. Monique Guay: Thank you, Ms. Chénier.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you. Ms. Folco.

Ms. Raymonde Folco (Laval West, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Let me follow on the footsteps of my colleague Monique Guay. I am also from Quebec and I was very active with the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse in Quebec. Ms. Folco just put questions similar to the ones I would have put, but this will allow me to go a bit further.

You say that there are flaws and weaknesses in the act. It is quite normal to detect such flaws with time and to want to improve the act. It is also our role, as legislators. Could you give us a substantial example of what could be improved in the Employment Equity Act?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: In my mind, one of the big deficiencies of this act, at this time, is that it makes no mention at all of accessibility. What is the most important thing for people with disabilities, who are at the greatest disadvantage when looking for a job? It is accessibility. If you cannot get into a building, how can you make a job application? How can you go to work there? The act says absolutely nothing about this. We would like to have much more power to ensure that offices are accessible to persons with disabilities.

Special measures are another example. There is a difference between special measures, whereby programs are implemented to hasten the progress, and affirmative action measures such as a policy to eliminate harassment, a job equity policy, or policies that benefit the designated group as a whole.

The act says nothing at all about special measures. If there is a big gap... As far as we are concerned, we must have them. At first, we analyzed the act and finally established 12 statutory requirements. It is in the memorandum. Before I make my presentation, if you have time, you might perhaps reread the memorandum. For each statutory requirement, we determined what the employer had to do to comply. As for the positive measures, we can tell them that they also include special measures. If there are big gaps, we need programs to give advantages to the people who have been up to now at a disadvantage.

So the act is silent on that. There might be a lot more progress for designated groups if the act applied to that kind of thing.

There is also the issue of the adaptation policy. The act requires the employer to make adaptations, but does not require a written policy or dissemination of the policy. Those things are very important in order to help all staff make progress. Those are the kinds of recommendations that we would like to make at this point.

Ms. Raymonde Folco: Do I have anymore time? Yes?

The Chair: Yes.

Ms. Raymonde Folco: You have examined the act and set down various criteria for each of the stages that employees must go through. It is a bit complicated and I do not know really how to put this. What types of criteria are you looking for? Can you give us an example?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: The most difficult part is when we get to the review of employment systems. It is very difficult for employers, since that is where all the employment practices will be reviewed, including hiring, promotions and training programs, to see where the problems lie. It is very important for this to be done properly. So employers were given very specific instructions on what they had to do to correct shortcomings. It is very difficult for us to do this kind of audit because it involves attitudes.

Employers' attitudes are another thing. Right now, there is nothing worse for disabled people than the negative attitudes of employers. Most of the time, employers do not even know that they are demonstrating a negative attitude. It is when they question their employees and take action that they will discover the problems.

When we do audits, on-site visits, we are told by employers that disabled workers in wheelchairs slow down the work process and that the workplace is too busy for that. Those are negative attitudes. Employers do not even know that they think this way. That is one of the major problems, and they need to be able to admit that there are problems. There are systemic problems. People do not even know it. These problems need to be discovered and acknowledged, and managers doing the hiring need to be comfortable with this concept and eliminate bad attitudes and barriers.

• 1215

When we do our audits, we are very specific about the assessment factors that we will be looking at for each statutory requirement. We have a process manual that we make available to employers. For each assessment factor, they are told what the auditor will be looking for in their workplace. They are told what they can expect and what they must do to comply with each of the 46 assessment factors. You can see how complicated it is.

I do not even know if I have answered your question. I believe that I have forgotten what you were getting at.

Ms. Raymonde Folco: It was a broad question, and I was not sure—

Do I still have a bit of time?

[English]

The Chair: You have about three minutes, or 90 seconds each.

[Translation]

Ms. Raymonde Folco: Since you speak quickly, we got a lot of information. That is excellent. But I believe that the interpreters may be having some problems.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Yes, I know that they are having difficulty.

Ms. Raymonde Folco: When the departmental officials came earlier in the week, I asked them a question about the economy. I will ask you the same question.

We are now in an economic downturn and so, as they say, last hired, first fired. You meet with the employers. They want to comply with the Commission's requirements. In this economic slowdown, they will surely tell you that they would really like to hire people and reach a certain proportion, whether for visible minorities, women, disabled people or Aboriginal people, but that it is impossible for them to do so because of the economic situation. What do you do then?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: One has to look at the statistics. The economic downturn is not affecting hiring. Last year, the economy was starting to slow down, but 75,000 positions were filled in the private sector.

[English]

The Chair:

Mr. Joe McGuire (Egmont, Lib.): In Air Canada it's affected.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: There you go.

[Translation]

So 75,000 positions were filled, and 14,000 positions in the public service. There is always turnover and always hiring going on. There are people who leave and who must be replaced. So we tell employers that they have to set goals for hiring and promotion.

Ms. Raymonde Folco: You are taking a macro approach, as they say, but when you look at the actual situation of a medium-sized business, for example, it is more difficult.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: I will give you the example that I raised earlier of a small trucking company whose business was shrinking and which had a very positive attitude toward employment equity, but which told us quite frankly that it did not really know how it was going to set hiring goals because it was unable to do so. We agreed with the company, since it was going through a very difficult period. We simply terminated the audit and said that we would come back a year later. We went back a year later, and the business was able to give us hiring goals at that time.

So the audit process is very flexible. The act gives us that flexibility, and it is something that we need to maintain the legislation. We need to be able to apply the standards in a flexible, non-bureaucratic way. When you look at an act like that, it is difficult to say that it is not bureaucratic, since there are 12 statutory requirements and 46 assessment factors. How do we do it? We put yourselves in the company's shoes and agree that it has a big problem.

There are some 20 audits that were simply postponed since the timing was not right. There were acquisitions and reorganizations going on. It did not make sense either for us or for the organization. The act allows us to do that, and I think that it is very important to be able to keep that flexibility.

During the whole time that we carried out our audits of 215 employers, we had no complaints from the employers, at least not yet. I think that this is why. Our documentation states very clearly how we need to be flexible. That is our bible. There is a whole page indicating that we are flexible, that there are special situations that will require special approaches and that we are there to negotiate, cooperate and persuade.

Thank you very much.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Spencer.

Mr. Larry Spencer (Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, Canadian Alliance): I sit here and have mixed emotions about a lot of what I hear. I'm maybe known for asking some of the harder questions in some ways.

• 1220

Number one is, what really is the role of the Human Rights Commission in the Employment Equity Act? Are you only the police force for that, or do you go way beyond just this? Is this only a part of your work?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: We are the auditors for employment equity—period. We don't touch the Canadian Human Rights Act. We don't consider ourselves to be enforcers. Enforcers don't persuade, cooperate, and collaborate. We are not even auditors. We say “auditors” because it's a simpler term, but we're “compliance review officers”. That's our role, which I suppose is one of “enforcement”, but the role allows for so much cooperation, persuasion, and collaboration with the employer that we certainly stay away from that sort of definition in our office.

Mr. Larry Spencer: My second question is, do you really believe that forced compliance with these kinds of standards is the best way to change attitudes in either employers, employees, or society as a whole?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Forced compliance, again, is something I don't agree with. It's compliance after cooperation, persuasion, etc. Now, is it the way to change attitudes?

Mr. Larry Spencer: But you work your way up that ladder until finally there's the force of compliance, so it's there.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Yes, but you have to look back at what happened when the other act was in force. There was no role for auditors, and there was no mechanism to go and see that employers were doing what they were supposed to be doing. So what did employers do? They did nothing but report to HRDC. That's why we saw such little progress.

It was a big step forward when the act said, okay, now we're going to go and check that the employers are doing what they're supposed to be doing. Mind you, they still haven't done it until we get there, which is okay because that's allowed for in the act. But once we get there we know that eventually they will be in compliance once we have negotiated with them.

So if you ask me why has there been so little progress to date in employment equity in this country, it's because there was no mechanism to ensure that employers were doing what they were supposed to be doing, to have positive action policies in place to enable them to fill positions in the workplace. Unless the employer has done all that work and understands why they haven't had a recruitment system or employment system that involved everyone....

That also relates to what we often hear about the merit principle. The merit principle is about including everyone. It is to make sure that nobody is excluded from the process, which is when I think we're going to start to see a lot of progress.

Did you want to address anything, Joan?

Mr. Larry Spencer: Keep your answers short; I'm simple-minded.

Ms. Joan Bishop (Director, Statistical Analysis, Employment Equity Branch, Canadian Human Rights Commission): My answer will be very short.

I think it's because most employers have cooperated and have started increasing their hiring of members of designated groups. We see considerable change to attitudes simply as people start entering the workforce, because there's nothing better than working alongside someone, when you haven't had that experience before, to change the attitudes of employees.

Mr. Larry Spencer: Okay.

A question we've come up with here as well is, what part of the annual budget do you spend for taking care of this act?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: It's 10% of the commission's overall budget, or $1.9 million, with a workforce of 29 in the branch.

Mr. Larry Spencer: That's 10% of...?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: It's 10% of the commission's entire budget, which is $1.9 million.

Mr. Larry Spencer: That's the budget or the 10%?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: The $1.9 million is 10% of the commission's budget. If the commission had only $1.9 million, I think we'd be in a lot of trouble.

Mr. Larry Spencer: You mentioned, as Madam Folco questioned here, the act not being strong enough in some areas, and I jotted down that the act doesn't go far enough in some areas. Could I ask you the opposite question, namely, does the act go too far in any area?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: No. We are learning a lot right now from the audit process. It's the first time anyone has been able to go and ensure that employers understood what it is they need to do. It's really only when we show up at their doorstep—unless they've been working with HRDC—that they really understand what it is they have to do. I think that was very important in the program itself.

Mr. Larry Spencer: The really big question that keeps confusing me is, how do you know when someone is fully represented? I keep hearing that term “fully represented”.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: I will turn this over to my.... That could be an answer that will take two hours.

Mr. Larry Spencer: Let's make it two minutes.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Let's make it two minutes. I'll turn it over to Joan.

• 1225

Ms. Joan Bishop: Well, in two minutes.... I think Neil Gavigan spoke a little bit yesterday about the way employers have to look at the community around them from which they recruit, and HRDC makes available to them data at the level of Canada, the province, and the city they're in. Based on that data and their judgment about which people have the qualifications for their jobs, they come up with a kind of mirror image of what a fully representative workforce would look like, and that's what they judge themselves against.

Mr. Larry Spencer: Okay, you made that clearer. What I understood from this was they were to do a survey within their own workforce, and I thought that meant employees. I didn't see how you could ever make progress if you only judged it from your own employees.

Ms. Joan Bishop: When the act talks about the workforce analysis, it's talking about comparing two things. One is the survey, so that we know what our own workforce looks like, but the other is a kind of mirror image of the community we're in to see if we're a good reflection of it.

So it's both.

Mr. Larry Spencer: There are still lots of mysteries there. Yes, it would take a two-hour session.

The Chair: Mr. McGuire.

Mr. Joe McGuire: Thank you, Madam Chair.

On page 3 of your report you state that the commission has continued to find few employers at or even near compliance at the initial audit stage, and you know now how this can be improved. You're been making suggestions here this morning and in your opening remarks about what it's going to take to improve the act.

At the same time you say you're going to hire an outside consultant to review the performance also. Do you think that's required, to go outside? You're operating the act. You know what is needed for you to do your job. Why would you want to go outside to a consultant?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: It's to conduct an evaluation of our program, of our approaches, to make sure—because we need that independent voice right now—that we can.... We are also looking for new ways of doing things.

We want to know that our process manual adequately addresses the needs of both the auditors and the employers. We need to know where the employers feel the process could be improved. They're not going to tell us that; they'll tell an independent person.

What we really would like also, because we're going into a stage now where we'll have to do a lot of audits of small employers, is to know how can we streamline the audit and still be effective.

That kind of information will come through from a survey of employers, from discussions with the stakeholders to see how well or badly we're performing and where we can improve or on what we can build. It's very timely, because it will give us some information for the review of the act as well.

Mr. Joe McGuire: Also, you're a pretty small group. Will the outside consultant be telling you how many more people you might need in order to fulfill your tasks?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: That's not part of the evaluation study right now. The evaluation is really on the audit process—on the scope of the audits, whether or not we are responding to the legislative requirements, how we're accomplishing things in that area. It's really to give us some valid information on which to build for the next five years.

We did try several streamlining approaches at the beginning. Some work well, some don't.

Mr. Joe McGuire: Do you have any idea how many more people you might need right now?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: I'd like whatever you can give me.

Mr. Joe McGuire: But essentially—

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: The more we have, the more audits we can do. We're going to get into a very critical aspect of the audits now, with employers in compliance reporting to us and showing us whether or not they're making progress.

We need to launch audits on that front for reasonable progress. If they're not making progress in hiring persons from designated groups, we need to go and say, “Why are you not making progress? Is it because you stuffed your employment equity plan in the bottom of your filing cabinet and forgot about everything?”

That stage, I would say, is a very important change in the act. The act tells us, at that stage—if we do that—we have to negotiate undertakings. I don't think we should have to negotiate undertakings at that point if the employer has totally neglected or totally ignored his employment equity plan. We should be able to issue a direction or take that employer to tribunal. That's going to be a very important recommendation in our revisions to the act.

• 1230

But yes, that's the sort of thing we are....

Mr. Joe McGuire: Are employers who receive a lot of start-up money, say from Department of Industry or HRDC wage subsidies, included in your mandate?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: No, it's only employers who are federally regulated: banks, communication companies, transportation companies—all the trucking, rail, air. There's what we call “the others”, which includes museums, grain elevators—that sort of thing—then the public service, and the separate agencies and crown corporations.

Mr. Joe McGuire: So companies who receive a lot of public money to be launched—

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: They could be in the pool.

Mr. Joe McGuire: —have no obligation to follow—

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: No, unless they're part of the federal contractors program, where the audits are being conducted by HRDC in that case.

Mr. Joe McGuire: But HRDC is involved in a lot of companies with considerable amounts of money—

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: That's true. That could be an interesting concept: if you get a subsidy of so much, and you're a company that hires so many, could you be subject to the Employment Equity Act? That would be very interesting research to do.

Mr. Joe McGuire: Not only that, I know companies in Europe that are heavily unionized would come into certain regions in Canada and insist they not be unionized as a condition of coming in. Basically, they would have one highly paid unionized force in their home country and a low-paid, non-unionized force. But you're not getting into wages paid to people who get hired?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Only if they're disadvantaged. If there's a concentration of designated members in lower-paying jobs, then that has to be looked at. It's not only hiring designated group members, it's enabling them to be hired according to their qualifications. They have to be distributed in the workforce according to the 14 occupational categories. We don't want to explain that right now, but, yes, that is a concern. We still find that a lot of designated group members are working at the lower-paying jobs.

Mr. Joe McGuire: So as part of the employment criteria, if a woman is hired doing the same job as a man, you're not concerning yourself with the wages one is paid vis-à-vis the other.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: That's the pay equity side of the commission, and it's under the Human Rights Act.

Mr. Joe McGuire: That's under the Human Rights Act.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Yes, but that's “equal pay for work of equal value”, which is the pay equity legislation. But we are concerned if we see that a lot of persons with disabilities are clustered in the lower-paying jobs. That has to be looked at by the employers. They have to find out why.

Mr. Joe McGuire: Thank you.

The Chair: We'll finish with one. You decide, Mr. Johnston, between you and Mr. Spencer.

Mr. Dale Johnston: Okay, I'm going to pull rank then, Madam Chairman.

The Chair: Okay.

Mr. Dale Johnston: I'm not clear at all, Nicole, on your statement about the budget. I would like to have a number for what your budget is. I understand you have 29 employees. That's clear enough, but there was confusion about whether it was $1.9 million, or 1.9% of something?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Our branch budget?

Mr. Dale Johnston: Yes.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: It's $1.9 million, which is 10% of the commission's budget.

Mr. Dale Johnston: Thank you. That's very clear.

Under “Public Sector” on page 8 of your report Employment Equity 2000, you say in the third paragraph under that heading that “certain tests and selection procedures have been found to have an adverse impact on one or more of the designated groups”. Could you explain that, please?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: That's part of what we ask employers to do when they are reviewing their systems. There are many employment systems that do have an adverse impact. For instance, a lot of companies still in Canada are hiring by word of mouth. Word of mouth replicates the existing workforce. Because they're not going out to the wider community, they're not hiring members in designated groups. That has an adverse impact on members of the designated groups. That's the sort of thing we're talking about, as an example.

• 1235

Mr. Dale Johnston: Okay. Further in that report you say, in the next paragraph:

...the exclusion of the Canadian Forces, the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) from the requirements of the Employment Equity Act is unacceptable.

I was not aware that the Canadian Forces, the RCMP, and CSIS were exempt. Maybe you can explain that.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: They had to be included, after having put through the necessary Order in Council, because there were some special requirements within the type of work they did that needed to be looked at for this type of occupation, and should have been done a long time ago.

My information now is that it is ready to go forward, only five years later. The RCMP and National Defence have done some good work in terms of employment equity, but they're still not subject to audits because they're not included in the Order in Council. But it should happen very shortly. It should not have taken this long.

Mr. Dale Johnston: Would you care to hazard an opinion as to whether or not they would be in compliance now?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: They're probably not any more in compliance than the others. A lot of organizations have done a lot of things, but they're in partial compliance with an awful lot of things. I would be surprised if they were. Only eight have been so far, of which two were government departments—Public Works and Government Services, and Status of Women—because they were fully represented.

I would be very surprised if they were in compliance and had done all the work required. We know they're not fully represented already, but I would be surprised if they had done all the steps required to have an employment equity plan that would lead to reasonable progress.

Mr. Dale Johnston: Finally, if the Canadian Forces, the RCMP, and so forth are not fully in compliance, how do they get around that? Only a certain percentage of the population, only a certain number of people, apply for those particular jobs. So how are you going to alter that in any way? Do you know what I'm saying? Only a certain number of people apply for jobs in the police force, intelligence, and the military. So what are you going to do about that?

Ms. Joan Bishop: I'll take that one. It goes back to our earlier point that the employer has to look at the pool of possible candidates for those jobs. We're working with the CAF right now to try to determine that, because they recognize it's not going to be an easy fit. They certainly won't be required, say, to have 50% women. That would be completely unrealistic. So we're trying to find standards on the proportion of women.

The CAF, for example, has done some public surveys to see what proportion of women or visible minorities would be interested in joining the CAF. So we're looking at that as one possible measure. If they find that 15% or 20% of the people interested in joining are women and they only have 10%, that might be a reasonable way of approaching it for them.

But it will definitely be tailor-made to each specific institution. It will never be a question that if 50% of the workforce are women, any particular employer will need to have 50% women. They really have to look at the qualifications of the jobs.

Mr. Larry Spencer: One last little question?

The Chair: Sure.

Mr. Larry Spencer: How would the RCMP not comply with that right now? Do you know where they are short? The training headquarters is in my riding. That's why I'm asking.

Ms. Joan Bishop: Because they're not under audit right now, I don't have detailed information. I would assume they still have a way to go with women, and possibly with visible minorities. I know they have done a lot of work with aboriginal communities, in trying to recruit. So they may be pretty close to representation there.

Mr. Larry Spencer: Yes, because when I go out there and watch their graduation ceremonies, there's a high number of women in all the troops and a high number of aboriginals.

Ms. Joan Bishop: It really does remain to be seen. For years before this act the RCMP reported voluntarily to the commission. So there's obviously a high interest in reaching full representation. But until we actually have an audit, we won't know.

The Chair: Just before I go to Madame Folco, something you said sort of piqued my interest. On page 33, I'm looking at a list of employers in compliance. I heard you say there were only two government departments, Public Works and the Status of Women, but I see here listed nine departments and agencies, and I don't see Public Works on it.

• 1240

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: I'm sorry, this is from last year. I was talking about compliance in the first phase, where we didn't have to conduct a second audit. I don't think there are any other government departments, but I can check my current figures. I do believe only Public Works and the Status of Women were in compliance in the first phase.

The Chair: Okay, so that's not listed here anywhere at all.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: On page 33, I thought....

The Chair: I don't see Public Works in here.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: They were not in compliance when we did this annual report. They will be mentioned in this year's annual report for 2001.

We actually have 19 government departments in compliance right now, and 41 out of 48 of the departments with over 100 employees are also under audit, which includes 99% of the public service population.

The Chair: What about the two at the tribunal, with directions at the tribunal—Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: They were challenging the commission at the tribunal at the very beginning, and they have both withdrawn from the tribunal. There is a direction outstanding. When Natural Resources withdrew, because the direction was still outstanding, we referred it to the tribunal. Unless Environment Canada is in compliance very shortly—and we are very hopeful they will be—we will have to refer the tribunal there as well.

The Chair: Can you give me any hint as to what category they—

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: When we started all this at the public service the first year, we said we'd do 18 government departments. We had so many auditors, so we tried to separate...give a good average with these sectors.

When we started the audits there was a lot of misunderstanding, a lot of reticence from certain departments. They challenged some of the requirements that were in place that were not clearly indicated in the act. Part of the problem we were having at the beginning was we were being challenged on, for instance, why we needed a written accommodation policy.

After that time, when we saw how bad the public service was, we said we'd increase it to 30 government departments. As government departments got to working with them, I think several things happened. A Clerk of the Privy Council came into office who very aggressively pursued employment equity and made deputy ministers much more accountable than they had been in the past.

The climate has changed. There's been a total switch in climate in terms of employment equity in the public service. Most of this year's annual report will be very complimentary to what has happened in the public service. We have all kinds of good cooperation now, a lot more understanding, much stronger accountability from deputy ministers, and we're really very pleased to see how things have gone.

It's probably also a factor of having included all government departments. When the act was implemented, they had not been included before. The system was so different from what they now have to do under the act. So it took a little while for them to get used to the concept and see exactly what the requirements were, but we were challenged on several fronts at the beginning.

The Chair: Madame Folco, you can finish up the round of questioning. You have about three minutes.

[Translation]

Ms. Raymonde Folco: At the very beginning, when the Employment Equity Act was brought in, the long-term goal was to change society, beginning with the public service, where the government has a lot more control, and then in the various businesses under the federal government's jurisdiction and also in companies having federal contracts.

Now the federal government is giving grants to companies and NGOs, and those organizations do not come under the Employment Equity Act. It seems to me that the act also stipulated that a business had to have at least 50 employees to be covered by the act. Am I mistaken? I get a little confused between this legislation and the Quebec act, which sets a minimum of 100 employees for private businesses and no limits for the number of employees in government.

• 1245

Do you see the possibility of perhaps extending the act to cover all cases in which the federal government basically gives money to businesses without really requiring accountability regarding the employees doing the work?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Absolutely. The more businesses come under the act, the more progress there will be for members of designated groups.

Ms. Raymonde Folco: Do you see major problems with that?

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: No more than were involved in the federal contracts program, which arises out of Cabinet directive. The act stipulates that the measures taken by federal contractors must be equivalent to those taken by organizations that are already subject to the act. It is done in a different way, but we would have to research that aspect and see what the impact might be. It may be more difficult for a company with very few employees to achieve employment equity. It is not really necessary in that case to do all the things that are now done with large businesses, but if a business receives subsidies and can make progress in hiring members of designated groups, we really do not have any problem with that. It would be a very positive thing for the country.

Ms. Raymonde Folco: There could be a minimum number of employees, as there are for businesses.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Yes, absolutely, including the House of Commons, including Parliament.

Ms. Raymonde Folco: Thank you, Madam Chair.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you.

I thank you for coming to assist us in our preliminary work as we prepare to study the Employment Equity Act.

I think we're going to take you up on your offer to come back and run us through the PowerPoint presentation on how an audit actually works. I think that would be extremely helpful to the members of the committee. Perhaps when we're a little further along, and after you've had some reporting back on your own consultations and how well they're going, you might come back and visit us again in the process.

Ms. Nicole Chénier-Cullen: Absolutely. We will be submitting a paper with recommendations on the act when you resume your deliberations in January.

The Chair: Excellent. Thank you very much.

The meeting is adjourned.