Mr. Speaker, the motion in front of the House today is one that someone may wonder about, specifically why a male would stand on this issue at all, thinking that it might be an issue only for women. I would like to state initially that as a Reformer I believe in equality of opportunity for every single Canadian but not equality of outcome.
I would like to comment on what qualifies me to speak on this issue. First, I was raised by a wonderful mother. Second, I have a sister whose love and affection I value. Third, I am a husband of 28 years, very happily married. Fourth, I am a father of seven children, only one a daughter. I have six sons, an imbalance
maybe in my life. Finally I have professional qualifications which have allowed me to be close to women and their problems for all my adult working life.
I would like to make some observations. One observation is that women live seven years longer on average than men. I have wondered in one sense why women would want to be equal to men in that regard. We have a shorter lifespan than women.
The second thing I would like to comment on is an observation that I have made from my time as a student in university. In my initial class there were 106 of us, but 14 of my classmates were women. I graduated back in 1968. I have watched the enrolment in university in my faculty very carefully. Today I find that the enrolment in the faculty is virtually equal.
I have asked myself what the change has been since 1964 when I entered college and today. Has it been a legislative change? Has there been a change in legislation that would require the university to have men and women treated as equal? There has not been such a legislative change at all. There has been what I call an educative change, a change that has allowed us to recognize that women's qualifications in the faculty that I graduated from are absolutely equal.
Another observation I would like to make is in a sense a bit of a myth exploder. I have heard figures bandied about that women are paid much lower than men on average and that for equivalent work they do not do as well as men. One thing that is missing from this equation, however, is if we compare men who were never married with women who were never married, the results are virtually equal for pay and have been in that regard equal for a long time. Those observations I would like to leave with the House at the start of my comments today.
I would like to address what marriage does to the equation. I look back to the days when my grandparents were raising their family. It was a traditional, old time Canadian family. My grandfather worked on a dairy farm, outside. My grandmother was the housekeeper and worked inside. She did the gardening, the housework, the cooking, the sewing, the yard chores, the house renovations, gave piano lessons, prepared for church. There are some who say that those duties were not at all equal. There are some who say there was an equality there. I asked my grandmother whether she felt there was any inequality there. She said there was an inequality, my poor grandad had all the hard work and she had all the enjoyable work.
In the modern family today things have changed dramatically. There are often two working parents who have to leave the home, go outside the household, and it is very difficult for a mother to nurture the children and do that only. With those working parents when they get married the most natural thing that happens is that they decide to have children. When the children come along there are certain negatives that relate to the mother as far as the job situation is concerned. When she is pregnant often morning sickness comes along and she has difficulty even getting to work during that period of time. She goes through childbirth and there is a period of time, some six weeks plus, in which she is incapable of working. In many cases there are mothers who decide that they will stay home and nurture the baby, breast feed, care for in a way that only a mother can care for the newborn baby.
There are cases in which there are medical problems that crop up. High blood pressure can be a problem with the post-partum period. There are other issues, problems with the placenta, problems that require the mother to be out of the workforce for a fairly long period of time.
When these issues ensue the mother automatically takes a drop in income. The father generally goes out and may even find extra work. The statistics I hear which say that men and women are not equally treated in our society in some cases are aberrations. I would rather have the statistics of never married men and women compared to see if we have equality.
I hear from both the Liberals and the Bloc members a desire to engineer socially, to move toward what I think are very well meaning principles. I do not agree with the final result but I know that the motives are good.
I want to bring up an example of a type of social engineering that I came across which I think is wrong headed social engineering.
With regard to social engineering, in the early 1900s there was a small community in Alberta called Brule. This community was based on coal mining and coal mining alone. It was a thriving community. In fact when the first world war came along the community boomed. People moved in, built homes, and had a real solid community. They had enough access to humanity. There was a theatre and a bowling alley.
The future of Brule looked very bright. However the coal reserve ran out. The very fine seam of coal they had literally ran out. It took six months until the community of Brule was non-existent. Everyone had moved away. They sought employment where employment was.
I wonder what would happen to Brule today if exactly the same thing occurred. I imagine that Brule would have had an influx of social workers who would come in to take care of the problems of alcoholism that would ensue from unemployed miners who wanted to stay exactly where they were because they had nice homes and all the amenities. I am quite convinced we would have a department of all kinds of things looking after the social needs and concerns and worries of the people of Brule. We would need somebody there for economic displacement, somebody to make sure the post office was looked after and some-
body to make sure that the school had all the advantages of the schools in the larger communities.
The social engineering that would keep Brule there today did not keep Brule there when it died. The community of Brule today is non-existent. Even the homes were taken down, disassembled, and taken to a community fairly close by. Brule was literally gone.
I think in our haste and great desire to do well that we sometimes socially engineer ourselves into the corner.
I would conclude my comments by saying as I said at the start, that I heartily support the equality of opportunity for everyone in Canada. I do not support the equality of outcome. My desire is to make sure that we do everything we can to prevent the impediments that will prevent the equality of opportunity. That goes for every single Canadian, man or woman.