Status of Women Committee on March 13th, 2008

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

I would add to that a national child care program, because three-quarters of all women now work for money outside of the home, to some extent. OECD studies have shown that is the single biggest change that could be made to immediately begin to close the gender gap. And it will also affect the quality of generations of lives.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

As you can see, we are really getting frustrated, because we've had Treasury Board before us, we've had PCO before us, we've had the Department of Finance with gender champions before us. On the paper we have given you, we would like your analysis of that budget, because some of the analysis they've given....

The last meeting was a little heated because we told them we didn't want fibbing, that CRA had 15% and they were claiming it was 16%, and all sorts of things were going back and forth.

We would like your analysis of what the Department of Finance claims is their take on gender. And if that's the way they're going to go, we need to be hard-edged when we get perhaps the deputy minister of Finance.

I'd like to thank you so much. You're passionate about this issue, and hopefully we will know when we have reached...because you will not have anything to complain about.

[Nancy Peckford]

Madam Chair, when is the deputy minister of Finance coming? What's the turnaround on this? What's the due date for our homework? Is it two weeks?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.