Minister, I'm going to ask you another question. Maybe you can answer that.
The Pay Equity Act was passed in 2018, and was a piece of government legislation, meaning before it was tabled there would have been discussions with cabinet, cabinet committees and departmental officials.
One would have also thought that this would also have meant that the government would have been fully prepared for implementing the new law.
That's not to mention, as my colleague from the Bloc pointed out, that Quebec has had a provincial law on the books since 1996, meaning the federal government didn't need to necessarily reinvent the wheel.
When I asked the PBO if this should have been done sooner, he said:
It was the government's own legislation, so they knew this was coming. I'm convinced they could have drafted and implemented regulations more quickly and had an earlier coming into force. Why that was not the case, I don't know.
Minister, why was it that it took so long? We are now over three years since the legislation passed. Was it because it's easier to say you were standing up for women in the workforce than to actually do something?