I'm actually going to go to Ms. Faraday, but I wanted to thank all witnesses. You're raising important points about this legislation.
The government is trying to ram this through very quickly. We still don't know how many clauses and subclauses are in this monster bill at 850 pages. It has more than seven independent bills inside it, and our best estimate is that less than nine seconds per clause or subclause is being allocated to study this. I think what I'm hearing from all witnesses is to hold on here. There are some major flaws in the legislation that need to be addressed, so the government shouldn't be trying to ram it through.
Ms. Faraday, I tried to keep up with the flaws you identified. Thank you very much for coming forward. They're very substantive, and I know you didn't have enough time to really review everything. I'm going to put to you two things.
First, you didn't mention the scissors clause that we found out about last night in the pay equity act that allows the minister to exempt any employer or class of employers from any provision of this act. Basically, the current minister, or a future government, could simply say all bank employees, all federal civil servants, are exempt from any provision of this act. I'm wondering if you could comment on that. Certainly, it was a surprise to me to learn that the government had put this in, allowing any government to simply cut out pay equity from whole industries.
Second, I would like you to come back to the issue of the purpose clause, and the concerns that you've raised about many women actually getting less protection with this bill than currently exists under Canadian human rights legislation. That's appalling if it's the case. That means there are major difficulties with this bill that need to be addressed.