Thank you, Madam Chair.
When the government tabled its budget, at the beginning of the year, it said it had consulted Canadians. In your presentation, Ms. Pageau, you mentioned extensive involvement—200 people made oral presentations, 60 submitted written briefs, and so on.
You also say that you find this legislation to be appalling and regressive. I take from this that you believe the government did not listen to you. You probably are thinking that you made good suggestions, but that the government paid no attention to them. Later on, if we have enough time, I would be interested in knowing how you reacted when you learned that pay equity would be dealt with in a federal budget bill. After that, I will put the same question to all of you.
You all referred to the settlement with Bell Canada. How much time did it take to achieve that settlement? I worked for Bell Canada at the time and I have a very clear recollection of the whole process. Ultimately, we accepted the offer. I was a unionized employee and was one of those who accepted the offer. And it was a negotiation. When you are trying to get someone to accept something that is hard to swallow, often you will try to tempt them with goodies. That is exactly what happened. Because most of the employees were women, pay equity was very important to them. We suffered significant losses in other areas, but because pay equity was important, we reached a settlement.
I want to come back to my colleague's question, because the Minister said that what he was proposing would not take as much time. What is your interpretation of what the Minister said?