According to Statistics Canada, in 2022, women in British Columbia earned 17 per cent less than men. Average hourly wages for men were $35.50, while women earned an average salary of $29.53 per hour, with the gap increasing for Indigenous, racialised, and newcomer women.

The new legislation follows engagement with Indigenous partners, business associations, organised labour, employee associations, employment and legal advocates, municipalities, and the non-profit and public sectors to ensure that addressing the pay gap goes beyond the gender binary.

It requires employers to include salary ranges on job postings and prohibits asking applicants for pay history information.

Moreover, employers will gradually be required to post reports on their gender pay gap publicly: all employers with 1,000 employees or more will be required to publish reports by November 2024, those with 300 employees or more in November 2025, and all employers with over 50 employees will be required to by November 2026.

Each year by 1 June, the Ministry of Finance will publish an annual report that will serve as centralised reporting of gender pay in British Columbia.

At a federal level, as we previously reported, the federal Pay Equity Act entered into force on 31 August 2021, providing that federally-regulated employers with ten or more employees have three years to develop and implement their proactive pay equity plans.

Equal pay, remains one of the priorities of the Canadian government and its provinces, and employers must adapt to the new provisions.