The government of Canada has launched an online “employment equity tool” aimed at assisting marginalized communities in the workplace.
“Every Canadian deserves a real and fair chance at success,” the federal government states online. “Reducing pay gaps and improving representation means knocking down the barriers that hold back marginalized communities in the workplace.”
In order to do this, the government wants to identify where the gaps are.
“If we’re going to close pay gaps and representation gaps, we have to know where those gaps are,” Minister of Labour and Seniors, Seamus O’Regan Jr. says. “There’s no equity without transparency.”
Minister O’Regan Jr. has thus launched Equi’Vision, a website designed to shed light “on the barriers to equity experienced by women, Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, and members of visible minorities in federally regulated private sector industries.”
Equi’Vision provides user-friendly, comparable data on workforce representation rates and the pay gaps experienced by members of the four designated groups recognized under the Employment Equity Act, according to a statement released by the minister.
With Equi’Vision, Canada becomes the first country in the world to make this level of information publicly available, O’Regan Jr. says.
“Better information leads to better, more informed decision making,” the government states.
Data for the platform is submitted by employers with 100 or more employees as part of their annual reporting to the Labour Program under the Employment Equity Act.
Since 2021, federally regulated private sector employers covered by the Act are required to report their salary data in a way that shows aggregated wage gap information.
The sector comprises approximately 19,000 employers and one million employees across Canada.