(Quebec) The Legault government will require its crown corporations to have boards of directors located in the “parity zone”. However, it risks forcing some of them to give up women directors, because there are more of them than what is provided for in the bill.
“Each of the crown corporations will be required to be in those areas. […] There will be a two-year transition period, ”Finance Minister Eric Girard said at a press briefing on Tuesday.
Mr. Girard wants to add for all Crown corporations “the requirement that the composition of the board of directors tends towards parity between men and women, and has at least one member aged 35 or less at the time of his appointment ”.
The bill says that the “proportion of women or men is between 40% and 60% of the total number of women and men who are members”. The minister’s office specified that the objective is to have “more women”.
However, many CAs find themselves in the opposite situation. At Hydro-Québec, for example, there are 11 women out of 16 members. At Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, there are 10 women out of the 14 members of the board of directors. Same situation at Loto-Québec, where there are 7 women out of 11 members. In all of these situations, the limit of 60% of the parity zone is exceeded.
According to the most recent data from Report on parity between women and men on boards of directors, 8 out of 47 CAs exceeded the limit of 60% women in December 2020.
They will have two years to comply if the bill is passed, Minister Girard’s office said.
Of all these organizations, only one will have to find more women: the board of directors of the Société des traversiers du Québec is made up of two-thirds of men. The situation has changed a lot since 2005, when the rate of representation of women on the boards of directors of all Crown corporations was 27%. It peaked at 55.8% in 2018 and was at 51.6% in December 2020.
Remuneration of all members
The minister’s bill has other objectives. He wants to remunerate all the directors of the CA Cost of the measure: between 5 and 6 million dollars. “My experience is that when you don’t pay […] the members of the board of directors of a crown corporation, it is difficult to fill the positions. This is my experience. We want to professionalize our crown corporations. [Chez] Retirement Quebec, [qui est] extremely important, currently, we do not pay members, ”he stressed.
“There will be different committees that will have to be present on the boards of directors and there will be skills profiles to sit on a board of directors of a Crown corporation,” he added.
PHOTO JACQUES BOISSINOT, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Eric Girard, Minister of Finance
Another addition: Crown corporations will have to proactively disclose all compensation for their five highest paid executives. “Currently, severance and signing bonuses are not part of the disclosure. And there, what we mean is: if you are in favor of disclosing the most senior executives, do it in full, ”explained Mr. Girard.
It also provides for a mechanism for “denouncing conflict of interest situations involving a chairman of the board of directors of a government corporation”. All government corporations are affected, and that includes the Caisse de dépôt et placement and Hydro-Québec.
This reform has been planned for a long time. Already, in the 2020-2021 budget, Mr. Girard had indicated his intention. He suggested that all board members of Crown corporations be paid, with the exception of public sector employees.
With Hugo Pilon-Larose, Press