Madam Speaker, this budget really is an attack on women. International Women's Day is approaching and it is supposed to be a day of celebration. I think that the celebrations this year will be quite sombre. We will have very little to celebrate because we are not advancing. We are actually going back in time. We were supposed to be moving forward, not backward.
The budget did not just leave women out. It actually attacked and undermined their equality. The federal government has to stop ignoring the fact that women in Canada need pay equity. Instead of attacking them, it should be helping them. The Conservative budget's proposals on pay equity are not just an attack on women but on children and families as well. Instead, it should be looking at EI changes. That would help women. We need to ensure that there is a reduction in qualifying hours and we should qualify the hours at 360. The qualifying hours are very different across Canada. They vary and it is very unfair to some workers, especially women.
We need to remove the two week waiting period so that people who find themselves out of work are not facing the hardships right away and can start accessing that money right away. We need to extend the qualifying weeks for the waiting period. The government has indicated that it is going to increase the qualifying weeks by five weeks. That is fine and dandy, but it is still not enough. We certainly need the 52 weeks to be there.
The demand for national, affordable and accessible child care has fallen on deaf ears with the government. The help it has given with regard to the allotted amount of money per month does not even cover a day's pay for a child care worker. It does not cover how much it actually costs to pay for a child to be in child care. When women have an average income of about $27,000 a year, compared to $45,000 for men, the tax reductions in the higher tax brackets are of very little help. The poor will get poorer and the rich will get richer.
I have talked about national child care because it would certainly assist women in the workforce to earn a decent living, not to say that they are going to work just to pay for their child care. We also have to look at the minimum wages at some point because the minimum wage across the country is not enough for someone to go to work. All too often, I have seen situations where people on welfare, who have actually gotten a job, are being told that they are better off staying at home because it is going to cost too much money to have their child looked after.
Instead of giving them a hand down, we should be giving them a hand up. I have talked about EI reform. I think that it is a really big key here because EI is the biggest economic stimulus one can find. For every dollar that is spent in the economy through a person who receives EI, it is an economic stimulus of $1.64. That was provided to the government during its prebudget consultations, yet it chose to ignore it. Imagine ignoring the biggest stimulus package. These people will spend their cheques over the first two weeks that they get them.
Infrastructure is another big economic stimulus, but we have to do it properly. We held two economist panels, one prior to the prebudget consultations and one after, and the information that was provided to us said the same thing. In order to deal with this and stimulate the economy, we have to deal with poverty. When we address poverty, the economic stimulus package will kick in. By building affordable housing and making sure that people have jobs, we can move the economy forward.
We also have to look at measures to end violence against women. We have talked about the upcoming International Women's Day. That is a big key as well. All too often, we see that the people who are living in poverty are the ones who are being abused. We need to make sure that the government addresses that.
With regard to the pay equity law, we saw in the budget how unfair it is to women. To say that one has to go into collective bargaining to do that, well not everybody actually has a collective bargaining process. That process can actually be lengthy because it all depends on the employers, whether or not they want to bargain. I think we are truly going back in time and we really need to have that addressed.
We have to talk about the people who are retiring. The largest number of people retiring right now and living in poverty are actually women. A 2004 study found that an astounding 45.6% of women in these circumstances still live in poverty. Just think about it, these people have actually helped build our country and all of a sudden they are finding themselves retired. They are supposed to be enjoying their retirement life, and now they cannot because the government refuses to address the fact that a pension income, CPP or a CPP disability, is not enough to live on. We need to make sure this is addressed. Again, it is hitting women the most.
With regard to jobs out there, this why I wanted to touch base on minimum wage a while ago. When looking at jobs, more than ever we see that women are taking those minimum wage jobs. More often than not we are seeing immigrants in those jobs. There is so much poverty out there that it is a shame that the government chose to attack women in this budget.
There is so much that we could actually do to support women. The labour movement certainly has been working in that direction. Instead of kicking women who are down, we should be giving them a hand up. Pay equity legislation prohibits wage discrimination where employees are performing work of equal or comparable value, whereas equal pay legislation prohibits it in respect of the same or substantially similar work.
We have to look at pay equity in Manitoba and Ontario because it is not a part of the regular collective bargaining process. Human rights cannot be bargained for at a bargaining table. The provincial legislation in Manitoba and Ontario covers both unionized and non-unionized employees. Manitoba legislation only covers public sector workers, while Ontario legislation covers both the private and the public sectors. For unionized workers, pay equity plans are developed between both the employer and the union but not during collective bargaining. This process happens separately.
Ontario has a pay equity commission with the same powers as the labour board. It can investigate, mediate and resolve complaints. If one side disagrees with the complaint resolution, there is an appeal process that is referred to as a tribunal. The results of the tribunal are binding.
In Manitoba the pay equity bureau existed to deal with complaints. However, because the Manitoba legislation is quite old and the process only existed for public service jobs, the pay equity commission has run its course. It functioned in a similar manner to the pay equity commission in Ontario. Any disputes now are handled through the Manitoba labour management services board.
Let us look back at how much a woman actually makes. A woman actually makes 71¢ on the dollar compared to a man. For a woman of colour, it goes down. For an aboriginal, the amount a woman makes is even less.
I think it is time the government takes a serious look at what it has actually put into the budget bill and pulls that part of it out. We really need to move forward on it. Pay equity is actually a human right protected by the Canadian Human Rights Act. The current law prohibits differences in wages between female and male employees and I do not think the government gets it.
