The private sector is also lagging behind in narrowing the pay gap for immigrants, the report found. Immigrants who came to Canada more than 10 years ago are paid nearly eight per cent less in hourly wages than non-immigrants.

Honestly question, why should we expect immigrants to have equal pay? They’re typically not native speakers, and they’re often without the sort of professional network you have to build. They’re also more inclined to take lower paying jobs to satisfy visa requirements or because they’re not used to Canadian cost of living.

Kopanarov told Global News pay equality may be happening in entry-level jobs, but the gap is still widening as we go higher up the corporate ladder, particularly in private businesses.

Two things I’ve observed, first, I interview way more unqualified male candidates for jobs than women by a very wide margin (meaning more men probably get jobs they’re barely qualified for at higher pay), and second I’ve found in the private sector you need to really push for raises and promotions, whereas public sector it’s much more seniority based with some pushing needed to get acting positions. In my experience men tend to push more for raises than women.

Personally the more formal the promotion/pay system at a company is, the less interested I am in working there, and that’s probably true if a lot of other men.

I’m not trying to dismiss the findings, but I’d like to see more variables like that taken into account.

The CCPA report also found that women employees in the private sector often face what’s called a small “motherhood penalty,” where their pay drops when they have children. That discrimination was not seen in the public sector.

I’ve seen this first hand, and I’m not a woman. There’s also a fatherhood penalty. The issue seems to be you go away and it creates a gap that other people fill, then you come back and have to start from square one on your performance review and you lose all momentum.

“Men make more once they have children because they are treated by employers as more competent as a result of fatherhood,” the report said.

This study does a lot of assuming. Becoming a parent is a life changing event, for men there are provider stereotypes, and maybe men with children push harder for promotions because now they have to care for a family. Conversely, women tend to make more sacrifices for their family, and how does that play out in the data?

Meanwhile, the public sector tends to reduce wages at the top for those making $55 an hour or $100,000 a year, meaning both men and women at this higher income level are paid less than their counterparts in the private sector. But the constraint is “slightly larger for men,” according to the report.

Does this result in an up and out effect for men? My first job out of school in private sector paid higher than the top band of government salary, so personally working in government has never made any sense for me given my skills.