Thank you for the question, Ms. Larouche.
As I just mentioned to MP Zahid, our economy, particularly the care work that's been done, unpaid care work, underpaid care work at best, has been done by women and women of diverse backgrounds. Pay equity is certainly a priority for us. We have put forward pay equity legislation. The work around addressing the gender wage gaps also includes ensuring that gender-based violence is addressed. If this most prevalent human rights violation is not addressed, women will not reach their full potential. If women are not supported, those who choose to go into fields that are often male-dominated, but also pay better, we're not going to reach pay equity, but I also agree that we need to work as a country to ensure that women get paid equally for work of equal value in the fields they choose to be in.
COVID has heightened just how important women's work is, how important care work in particular is, and how we all need to do better to compensate those who are doing this work. The pandemic pay that our government put forward to support provinces and territories is an example of just how much we believe that this needs to happen, for the sake of it being the right thing to do, but also, if we don't pay people fair wages, they're not likely to stay in those fields where we need them, and that's going to create a whole other set of challenges, as we have seen throughout COVID.