Law Commons^™

Pay Equity: A Fundamental Human Right, Margot Young

All Faculty Publications

This paper undertakes the limited task of determining what interpretive consequences, if any, might flow from the removal of federal pay equity provisions from their current location in the Canadian Human Rights Act and placement of such provisions in their own stand-alone legislation. Part of the interpretive stance courts currently bring to their consideration of the federal pay equity provisions reflects the placement of these provisions within federal human rights legislation. Courts have held that human rights legislation has a special nature or quasi-constitutional status. This status results from the fundamental character of the values the legislation expresses and the …