Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to start by welcoming you and thanking you for being here today.
I've had an opportunity to travel around Quebec twice. The purpose of the first trip was to present the bill currently being studied by the committee, which is designed to improve the employment insurance system. Through our travels, we consulted with various groups and saw very clearly that women are extremely affected by the current employment insurance system. I'm thinking of women who are single parents and women who were about to be eligible for a pension, but were continuing to work in the hope that their pension would increase somewhat.
In the context of our study on the status of women, my colleague and I also met with a number of women's groups. They told us they suffered from discrimination in the measures introduced by the government. Often, these women do not choose to remain at home. For example, when they choose to have children, they take themselves out of the labour market and consequently, are not eligible for some measures that would guarantee their future security.
Ms. Rose, the paper we received about pensions states that you do not expect the gap between men and women to be filled in the next 40 years. Can you give us more clarification on this? In your opinion, what could be done to try to reduce the huge gap between men and women?