Bill 3, the Pay Transparency Act, 2018 (the “Act”), has completed the Ontario legislative process and will receive Royal Assent and become law imminently.
The Act establishes requirements relating to the disclosure of information about the compensation of employees and prospective employees, many of which requirements will come into effect January 1, 2019. The Act underwent only minor amendments during the legislative process to the version that was initially tabled, which we wrote about in detail in our blog earlier this year.A key element of the Act for larger employers with at least 100 employees will be the requirement to submit pay transparency reports to a government Ministry to be named (but likely to be the Ministry of Labour) that include information about:
- the employer;
- the employer’s workforce composition; and
- differences in employees’ compensation with respect to gender.
As a result of the minor amendments to the Act during consideration by the Standing Committee on Social Policy, every employer with 100 or more employees will eventually have to prepare annual pay transparency reports no later than May 15 each year. Employers with 250 or more employees must submit their first pay transparency report no later than May 15, 2020. Employers with 100 or more employees but fewer than 250 employees must submit their first pay transparency report no later than May 15, 2021.
The Ministry will publish the pay transparency reports, or otherwise make them available to the public.
In addition to submitting the reports to the Ministry, employers that are required to prepare a pay transparency report must post it online or in at least one conspicuous place in every workplace of the employer where it is likely to come to the attention of employees in that workplace.
Further details about the specific information that larger employers will be required to include in pay transparency reports will be included in Regulations that have not yet been released by the government. We will continue to track further developments related to the Act and its Regulations and will post further updates on our blog as they become available.
This blog is provided as information and a summary of workplace legal issues.
This information is not intended as legal advice.