BC Pay Transparency Act: what employers with 50+ employees must post by November 1, 2026

British Columbia's Pay Transparency Act has been phasing in since 2023, and November 1, 2026 is the first reporting deadline for employers with 50 or more employees in BC. For many mid-sized businesses, it will be their first public report on pay by gender.

This article explains who has to report, what the report contains and where it must be posted, along with the rules on job postings, pay history questions and pay discussions that already apply to every provincially regulated employer, whatever its size.

Who has to report, and when

The Pay Transparency Act requires larger employers to prepare a pay transparency report on or before November 1 each year. The obligation has been phased in by size:

• 2023: the BC government and the six largest Crown corporations (BC Hydro, BC Housing, BC Lottery Corporation, BC Transit, ICBC and WorkSafeBC).
• 2024: employers with 1,000 or more employees in BC.
• 2025: employers with 300 or more employees in BC.
• 2026: employers with 50 or more employees in BC.

Size is measured on January 1 of the reporting year, and the Province's guidance says to count all BC-based employees, whether they work on-site or remotely. So if you had 50 or more employees in BC on January 1, 2026, your first report is due by November 1, 2026, and a new one is due every November 1 after that. For years after 2026, the Act keeps the threshold at 50 employees unless the Province lowers it by regulation.

The Act applies to provincially regulated employers. Federally regulated employers are subject to different requirements.

What goes into the report

The report compares pay across gender categories, using your payroll records for either your most recently completed fiscal year or calendar year. The Province's guidance lists the information needed for each employee: hours worked, ordinary pay, special salary, overtime hours and overtime pay, and bonus pay, along with basic details about the employer such as its industry code and the reporting period.

The gender information comes from your employees, and the Act sets out how you collect it. In your first reporting year you must make reasonable efforts to collect it from every employee. After that, you must ask each new hire, and give everyone the opportunity to provide or update their information at least once every calendar year. Each time, you must tell employees that providing the information is voluntary. The Province's categories are man, woman, non-binary, and unknown or prefer not to say.

The Province offers an online Pay Transparency Reporting Tool, accessed with a Business BCeID. Using it is optional, as long as your report contains all the required information. Note the guidance's warning: finalizing a report in the tool does not submit it anywhere and does not, on its own, meet the Act's requirements.

Posting the report is the step that counts

The report is not filed with the government. Instead, the Act requires you to publish it, as soon as practicable after completing it, on a publicly accessible website maintained by you or on your behalf. An internal staff site does not count. If you have no public website, you must post a copy in a conspicuous place in each workplace and give a copy to any member of the public who asks. The Province's guidance adds that the report must stay accessible until you post the following year's report.

The Act also creates a Director of Pay Transparency, who receives reports of employer non-compliance, and requires the Minister of Finance to publish an annual report by June 1 that includes the number of those reports. Because your report will be public, review what the numbers show before it goes up: employees, job applicants and competitors can all read it.

Rules that already apply to every BC employer

Three parts of the Act are not tied to the size of your workforce. They apply to every provincially regulated employer, including a business with a handful of staff.

• Pay in job postings. Since November 1, 2023, every publicly advertised job opportunity must state the expected wage or salary, or the expected range. That includes jobs on your own website and jobs posted by third parties on job search sites. It does not cover general "help wanted" signs or recruitment campaigns that do not mention a specific job, or jobs that are not posted publicly. You do not have to include bonuses, overtime, commissions, tips or benefits, and the Province is not currently limiting how wide a range can be.
• No pay history questions. You must not seek an applicant's pay history, whether directly or through a third party such as a recruiter, unless that information is publicly accessible. You can still use pay information you already have about an existing employee when setting their pay for a new position.
• No penalties for talking about pay. You must not dismiss, suspend, demote, discipline, harass or otherwise disadvantage an employee, or threaten to, because they asked about their pay, disclosed their pay to a co-worker or a job applicant, asked about your pay transparency report, asked you to comply with the Act, or reported you to the Director.

Where employers get caught out

• Postings you did not write. A recruiter's or job board's listing that leaves out the pay range is still an advertisement for your job.
• Old forms and scripts. Application forms with a "current salary" field, and interview guides that ask candidates what they earn now, need to be updated.
• Confidentiality clauses. A handbook rule or offer-letter clause telling staff to keep their pay secret sits uneasily with the Act's protection for employees who share it, and disciplining someone under it could be a prohibited reprisal.
• Leaving the data to the last minute. Gender information has to be collected with the right notice, and payroll data has to be pulled for a full fiscal or calendar year. Neither is a job for the last week of October.

The report is now an annual obligation, so it helps to put it on the same calendar as your other yearly compliance tasks. If your business is incorporated, our article on incorporating in BC outlines the other ongoing obligations a company carries.

Hiring, or at 50 employees or more? Have your postings and policies checked before November 1

Our business lawyers can review your job postings, application forms, employment agreements and workplace policies against the Pay Transparency Act, as part of keeping your business's legal paperwork up to date.

Call 604-259-2844 or send us a message to arrange a consultation at our Vancouver office.