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?