Parts of Quebec’s pay equity law, designed to guarantee equal pay for men and women, are unconstitutional, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Thursday.
Six of the SCOC’s nine justices signed onto two decisions connected to 1996 Pay Equity Act. In both cases, the majority held that the law infringed on the right to equality guaranteed by Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In the ruling, Judge Rosalie Abella wrote that amendments made to the law by the Quebec government in 2009 hurt women’s access to pay equity. According to those changes, employers were to be assessed every five years to see if they were complying with the law, with violators having to adjust the future salary of women, but not issue any retroactive compensation.
Several labour organizations challenged that aspect of the law, saying it weakened the Pay Equity Act and penalized workers.
The Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the unions but the Quebec government appealed the case to the Supreme Court. Six of the judges found that the five-year element of the law was unconstitutional.
In a separate case, the court ruled that the six-year wait for unionized daycare workers to have their pay catch up is discriminatory but justified. Eight of the nine SCOC judges said they believed the day was necessary to find the right solution to properly implement the Pay Equity Act.
The Quebec government had given the Pay Equity Commission more time to calculate compensation for women workers in predominantly female workplaces where there were no male-dominated jobs for comparison.
