Status of Women committee  Equal pay, male or female, in my profession...we are paid according to a scale that does not reflect gender. That's correct.

Status of Women committee  Do you mean in the same profession as I'm in?

Status of Women committee  Anyone who is employed in the profession that I am in is paid at the same scale rate. If it is--I'm going to guess--a security guard, whether they are male, female, aboriginal, or whatever, they would be paid according to their scale, so would they have pay equity within that? I would think.

Status of Women committee  I think it was just there. If you are a physiotherapist in a certain area, under the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, you are paid according to that pay scale, and it's the same thing with the nurses, and it's right across...within that regional health authority.

Status of Women committee  Those are two different questions. Do I know any? Yes. It's more on a friend type of a basis, a social basis. You hear of these things; you know of these things. Also through the media, yes, you hear of these things and you know of these things. Of course, we are also trained to be watchful in our profession and to be very sensitive to patients, male and female, who may have had various issues of abuse.

Status of Women committee  Yes, I completely agree with Doraine that we do need more action. We need more action. I'd like to refer back, if I can, to the previous panel, where there was a group asking for money so that they could prepare people for political office. I mentioned in my report that I had just been through an election, and there was nothing there for me, but I had heard of it being provided by the senior election official in other areas.

Status of Women committee  As for me, I am currently employed as a physiotherapist. We have pay equity. I don't think there are any options on that. The majority of the rest of the people in the hospital are nurses, and they have pay equity, so in my world, yes, absolutely. I would say for sure that we are at least equal.

Status of Women committee  I understand your question is about why we want the money to go to general research instead of to helping individual women. I guess my answer to that would be that it just reminds me of a story I heard of two people walking down the beach. There were all these starfish on the beach and they were stranded.

Status of Women committee  I'm sure that if we're dealing with a woman who comes to your door and says to you she is in crisis, there is a problem with violence, and she needs help—

Status of Women committee  If you were to say to her, I'm going to take that to the Status of Women and we are going to research that quite thoroughly, I'm sure that would make her feel good on some level, but it's not really what she needs right now.

Status of Women committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. I am an ex-member of the association and am not speaking on their behalf. I'm at least the third generation of empowered females in my family. It was interesting to hear you speak of mothers and grandmothers. My grandmother on my father's side was an original Canadian pioneer, actually breaking sod as a homesteader in Saskatchewan and building a stronger Canada in the process.