As you know, there are three jurisdictions now that will have proactive pay equity legislation—Ontario, Quebec and now the federal jurisdiction. In the federal jurisdiction, a little over a million workers will be covered by the code, because the federal government is also going to broaden the coverage to ensure that the federal contractors' program will also have to comply with proactive pay equity legislation. If you're seeking to do business with the federal government, you're going to have to meet that requirement.
I think all of this will have an extremely positive impact on women, but more importantly, this is about not just women's pay equality but also their economic equality.
Statistics have pointed time and time again to the fact that women live in poverty much more than men do comparatively. A large part of that is because we have been discriminating for generations and not paying them adequately. This is certainly going to raise the standard significantly. I think now we have to figure out a way in which we will continue to do it in our federations and our affiliates at the provincial level. How do we get other provinces to bring forth proactive pay equality legislation?
The other thing I would also say is that proactive pay equity legislation, as you know, deals with only one aspect of women's overall equality. I think a national child care system whereby women will be able to have their children in child care will be a tremendous boost to them really engaging, as we've seen with Quebec's history. Where they have the ability, they will be giving back to the economy far more than they take out with child care, but child care is an essential part of bringing women's equality in our society to a higher level.
I can't say enough about what this will do for the challenges. In one case we have noted consistently in our presentation, it took 28 years for women to achieve pay equity in one federal workplace, because that's how the litigation went on and on and on before we were able to kind of resolve this situation.
This legislation will end that history, but more importantly, I think the commission's role will be a tremendous part of this, because the commission can encourage the parties as to how to find solutions to their pay equity problem. I think some of the areas we identified that can be addressed would be a tremendous boost.
A lot of people are misqualified in the federal and provincial jurisdictions. It's critical that those loopholes will be now plugged in part III of the code, but equally we want to ensure that while employers may have diverse interests, they cannot evade their responsibility with regard to how they pay women who work within their jurisdiction.