Thanks, Chair.
Thanks, Mr. Spengemann, for the bill. I appreciated your caveat that this isn't meant to be celebratory. However, there's nothing in the bill that says that.
I'm going to propose to the committee that we call this “gender equality action week”. I'd be interested to know if your focus is actually on taking action, so I'd be interested to know whether that's something you would consider.
In your introduction, you said that governments “cannot do this work alone”. That is true. I would argue that the front-line organizations in the women's movement, especially during the Conservative decade in power, really carried the work of gender equality. We're also recognizing an enormous hole in federal government action.
I think you were in the House when I gave my speech. You know that I supported your bill at second reading. I'm discouraged, though, that despite the very stark list in the preamble, where you ring this huge alarm on all kinds of issues facing women—the cost of violence to the economy, the continued pay gap, the lack of pay for child care, the violence for indigenous women, and on and on and on—the remedy is so minute.
I'd like to ask why you didn't take a more prescriptive approach. We had a motion in the House a year ago to implement proactive pay equity legislation. The committee recommended that the government table that legislation this coming June. We've had the government say late 2018.
What's your view on the implementation of pay equity legislation as a way to take federal leadership on gender equality, and what should the timeline be, in your view?