Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the remarks of the hon. member who just spoke. I have three girls myself. They are still young, of course, but they will grow up. I realize that Quebec has gone much further than the federal government with respect to equality between spouses and equality for women.
In 1990, for example, Quebec passed an act to encourage economic equality between spouses, so that when they divorce, or separate or one of them dies, the property acquired by the couple is divided pretty fairly between the two former spouses, the man and the woman. Canada lags far behind Quebec and several other provinces on this issue of recognizing spouses as equals.
I remain somewhat sceptical just the same. In a justified and justifiable outburst, the previous speaker mentioned women being in danger on our streets and everywhere, women being done an injustice.
I have a problem reconciling this with the fact that the hon. member herself and her colleagues recently rose in this place and brought the house down when the Minister of Human Resources Development tabled his famous bill amending the Unemployment Insurance Act. The policy statement says that from now on, entitlement to UI benefits in Canada will be based on family income. Unfortunately-and the Bloc Quebecois and I did not make this decision-women are hit hardest by such a measure. If the husband's annual income is, say, $55,000 and his wife earns $22,000, $25,000 or $28,000 per year, and becomes unemployed, she will not be entitled to UI benefits because her husband makes good money.
The hon. member opposite rose in this House to applaud this measure at the time it was introduced by the Minister of Human Resources Development. Personally, I find it is all too easy to act offended, to rise and say that the right hand does not know what the left one is doing or vice versa. Logic should prevail and one should rise once in a while, not only on days when we debate the status of women, violence against women or other such issues, and tell the minister that he is off the beam with his procedure.
It seems to me that the story changes depending on the circumstances. On days when we are dealing with women's issues, violence against women or matters affecting women directly or indirectly, they come here and denounce injustices. I agree there are some, but in the normal course of day to day administration, knowing that federal legislation concerning women is 30 years behind provincial legislation, I think that more could be done, besides such statements, to remedy the situation.
This concerns men and women alike, including fathers like me. I have three young daughters who will grow up to be women living in this society and I am not so proud of the legacy we are leaving them. In Quebec, there is an ad on television that says: "I myself am not affected by violence. I do not go out at night; I stay home. I do not talk to strangers; I stay home. No, I cannot say that I am affected by violence".
That is similar to the situation faced by women in Canada. My friend, the hon. member for Frontenac, said earlier that while walking in a somewhat disreputable neighbourhood in Sherbrooke, his daughter was asked by police officers: "What are you doing walking at night in a neighbourhood where you should not be?"
This does not happen only in Sherbrooke. It happens in Halifax, Edmonton, Calgary, and many other places. What are we doing about this? What steps did the Liberals take to address the situation? They gave us a nice gun-control policy to be implemented in the year 2003. It took Marc Lépine 20 minutes
to go on a shooting spree at the École Polytechnique five years ago. How many more shooting sprees can we expect before 2003? When all you need is 20 minutes, it is anybody's guess.
I think that the government must translate words into action, show some backbone and try to do something so that women will feel after today's session that something was accomplished in the House of Commons today and that there is a political will to achieve justice for women. But no. All members of this House make big speeches but when the time comes to support or reject motions that go against women's interests, the party line comes before anything else, including nice speeches like the one that the hon. member just gave us.
I strongly disagree, because I do not want to see my three young daughters in 10, 12, 15 or 20 years treated even worse than their mother is being treated at this time.