Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for referring in his speech to the important piece of legislation around pay equity. I served on the Special Committee on Pay Equity, which tabled its report in June 2016. It is getting close to two and a half years later and we are finally seeing the legislation.
I want to call to the attention of my hon. colleague how long women have been waiting for their basic human right, and that is to receive equal pay for work of equal value. It is their constitutional right. It has been over 42 years.
Now, with this legislation, much of which did not take into account amendments proposed by our expert witnesses, it has actually watered things down. I do want to call to everyone's attention that Canada did have the gold standard of a pay equity report done in 2004, the Bilson report. Most people who came forward and spoke to the Special Committee on Pay Equity said that the government should implement that report, not redo everything, and actually move forward and start to look at the intersectional issues of pay equity between gender and race.
I just wanted to bring that forward. Could the hon. member comment on the fact that it will be four more years before any pay equity impact lands in the lives of working women?