Status of Women Committee on April 30th, 2018

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

We will continue to work towards addressing what we see as challenges for all Canadians. In putting forward the measures we included in budgets 2016, 2017, and 2018 to address the challenges facing women—helping families with increased child benefits in 2016, helping families with a national housing strategy and a child care strategy in 2017, and by thinking about ways we can deal with systemic challenges through the budget 2018 measures—we're trying to get at the fact that there's not as much opportunity for women in our economy as we'd like. We think that is a really important goal we need to achieve together.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Minister, I think you should be clear with Canadians that when you say there's not as much economic opportunity, what you're saying is that we're not able to squeeze out of these women as much taxation as we would like and, therefore, we want them to enter the workforce full-time so we can get more of those taxes so we can pay for our out-of-control spending.

As leaders, we make mistakes from time to time, but what sets a good leader apart from a poor leader is that he is able to take responsibility for his actions.

In your meeting with the finance committee you took offence to a question that was asked by my colleague Lisa Raitt. You got angry with her, and you stated that you and your government “will drag along the neanderthals who don't agree” with you.

Minister, it is not only inappropriate for you to call Ms. Raitt a neanderthal, but the image that you paint of grabbing someone and dragging them along actually perpetuates violence and discrimination against women and girls in this country. It perpetuates the negative stereotype or negative attitude that is very prevalent already, that men are smarter than women and women deserve to be dominated by men. That is the image you paint, one of dragging my colleague along.

Minister, my question is very simple. Would you like to take responsibility for your actions today and apologize to my colleague Lisa Raitt?

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Maybe I can step back and say I think that Canadians do have a sense that fairness matters. I think as we look at some challenges, we see that equal pay for equal time is not there for women. They are earning 88¢ on the dollar. When you look at it in the terms of women—

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I'm going to stop you. My question was really simple. It was simply an opportunity to allow you to be a really great leader and take responsibility for your actions. I'm going to give you one more opportunity.

There are women across this country who listened to your statement, and it was incredibly degrading towards women from coast to coast. It was one that perpetuated the repulsive attitude that women are less than men and should be forced into submission.

Minister, would you like to apologize to my colleague Lisa Raitt, and to all Canadian women, for perpetuating this line of thought?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have five seconds.

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

We're very pleased to continue to put forward measures that are going to help Canadian women.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I'm very sorry to cut you off. I'm trying to remain as neutral as possible. I know I've had some people who are concerned that I've not been cutting this off. I'm going to remind everybody that it is up to the will of the questioners: it's their time; it is always the members' time. We will continue with that.

We're now going to Sheila Malcolmson for her seven minutes.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for coming.

Your fellow Liberal members voted down having you at this committee a year ago. I wanted to invite you to the committee so I'm really glad that we agreed as a committee to get you here now. I want to thank you also for some of the early wins that we were able to get together. Having women represented on banknotes was something that the grassroots movement and NDP had pushed to have for a long time, so thanks for saying yes to that so early in your term, and also for saying yes to the NDP motion on pay equity in our first month or so in this Parliament.

We expected that a feminist budget would have had pay equity legislation and financing for pay equity. As you say, 1.2 million women are affected by the lack of federal pay equity legislation. At the all-party committee, all three parties agreed, which doesn't happen very often, that pay equity legislation should be tabled by June 2017. Pierre Trudeau promised it, the Liberal Prime Minister, 42 years ago, so it's a great disappointment that it's not in the budget.

The labour minister says that the consultations finished last year. We haven't heard anybody who says that we need more time on this. Are you the one responsible for not funding pay equity in your feminist budget?

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

I want to be really clear. We have committed to proactive pay equity legislation. It will be in the budget implementation act, no. 2. We see this as a critically important step. We know it's important for us to show leadership in this regard. We know it's unacceptable that people in any part of our society, but certainly in the areas of federal responsibility, aren't paid equally for work of equal value. That is what we identified in our budget, and that is what we will be delivering on this year as we said.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Can women count on you to fund pay equity in this fall's economic update?

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

You can count on the fact that we're moving forward on this, and, obviously, moving forward on this means that we need to take responsibility for ensuring that it's properly funded.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

But it won't necessarily be in the fall economic update?

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

I'm committing to you that we already put it into budget 2018 as a commitment, and that commitment was intended for this budget period, including budget implementation act, no. 1 and budget implementation act, no. 2.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

There was no money for it whatsoever. The labour movement advocated at a bare minimum that you put the framework in place, although they wanted to see legislation and funding for pay equity years ago, and that you fund the establishment of the pay equity commissioner.

Given your government's willingness to spend all kinds of money, that would have been a very important gesture. Why did you choose not to take labour's advice?

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

To be clear, this is something coming this year. This is not something that we're delaying, and we will not be coming forward on anything without ensuring that the proper funding is there.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

I would argue that if this really were a feminist budget, you would have funded pay equity. If I were the Prime Minister, I would have implemented it in year one. I would have had the economic benefits accrue from having women paid equally, and I would have been campaigning on it in 2019. I'm just amazed that you haven't already taken my good advice on this.

Child care is another big missing piece, and lots of NGOs are saying that you can't call this a gender budget, you can't call this a feminist budget, without funding universal affordable child care. I know you're getting the same advice from beyond the grassroots. The Conference Board of Canada, the governor of the Bank of Canada, the International Monetary Fund, and the OECD are all urging Canada to fund universal affordable child care as the next big new social program.

I want to know why you're not taking their advice.

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

We recognize that there will always be more to do in ensuring that we're successful in helping all Canadians to have the opportunities they deserve. We look at our term in office as something that started in 2015, and we started with measures that we know had an important impact on families and on women with the introduction of the Canada child benefit and the approach we took.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

With respect, Minister, though, without the creation of new child care spaces, licensed affordable day care, the Canada child benefit doesn't give women spending power. It doesn't give them a new place to spend.

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

That's why I was going to move on from there, with that program, which of course gave on average $2,300 to nine out of ten families, and significantly more for single women. Then in budget 2017, we put in $7.5 billion over 11 years to create additional spaces, to make spaces more affordable across the country for day care. Of course, this year we're taking significant other measures that will have, we think, a long-term and important impact on women's success.

We don't argue that all of our work is done. We do think we've made very important strides in each year that we've moved forward. What I can tell you is that we're going to continue to focus on how we can ensure success for women across our country in whatever way they choose to find their personal success.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

You've seen the same headlines as I have. Without pay equity, without your feminist budget funding pay equity and universal child care, you really can't call it a gender budget. Those are words, not action or implementation.

We have quotes from Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, and Child Care Now, Morna Ballantyne particularly, who are both saying that a gender equality budget without child care is not a gender equal budget. Morna Ballantyne says that “Without universal child care, women's equality will never become a reality in Canada.” The Childcare Resource and Research Unit; the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women; Kathleen Lahey, a Queen's professor; and Armine Yalnizyan from CCPA all say that they are astonished that a government that's willing to spend and says it's a feminist government, that says it's going to invest in social infrastructure....

Here we are. It looks like the government is ragging the puck on feminism by spending so late in the term that you're not going to be able to realize any of the advantages for women. Women are far behind, as you said in your introduction and acknowledged in your speech.

Can you help me understand the misalignment here between words and action?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have 10 seconds.

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

What I can say is that I appreciate your continued advocacy, which I think is really important. We've made really important steps from day one. We will continue to do so—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you.

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

We're going to ensure that we—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you, Minister Morneau.

We're now going to move over for our next seven minutes to Emmanuella Lambropoulos.