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Entry into force of Bill 10, An Act to amend the Pay Equity ...

Laws and rules

On May 10, 2018, the Supreme Court of Canada declared unconstitutional certain articles of the Pay Equity Act, CQLR c E-12.001 ("Act"), because they created a discriminatory regime against women by not providing for the correction salary differences from the actual date of the events leading to these differences.

Next, Minister Jean Boulet presented to the National Assembly Bill 10: An Act to amend the Pay Equity Act with a view to improving the assessment of the maintenance of pay equity. The latter came into force on April 10, 2019.

Several amendments have been made to the Act, the main ones being the evaluation of the maintenance of pay equity.

CNESST recalls "that the evaluation of the maintenance takes place every 5 years after an initial pay equity exercise. The purpose of this assessment is to ensure that people in typically female jobs always receive the same pay as those in typical male jobs of equivalent value in a company. Since the company's situation may change over time, it must be verified whether wage differentials between female and male jobs have been created. If this is the case, these discrepancies must be corrected. "

All employers subject to the Act must comply with the new obligations. For this purpose, a business with an average of 10 or more employees in a calendar year becomes subject to the Act as of January 1 of the following years. As soon as the company becomes subject to the Act, it remains so under the same conditions, despite any change in the number of employees employed.

The following are the main changes to the Act:

As part of the implementation of the changes to the Act, events that have generated pay gaps, and their dates (beginning and end), are very important because they must now be part of the information provided to employees.

For these reasons, employers should document the events that occur in the business more continuously.

To help you comply with the new provisions, the CNESST provides you with several tools, available via the following link:

http://www.ces.gouv.qc.ca/equite-salariale/loi/modifications_legislatives.asp