Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address the opposition's motion encouraging the government to recognize equality between men and women and to implement necessary measures to ensure this in the area of federal jurisdiction.
On this International Women's Day it is truly a privilege for me to address such an important issue here in the House. However before I begin I would like to thank my mother, Irene Lemak, for deciding to have me, raising me, putting up with me, looking after me and loving me. Thanks, Mom.
Back to the motion, it is our duty as members of Parliament to address the problems of equality that women face in the workforce, encourage co-operation and protect the rights of all Canadians.
Economic equality can only exist between men and women when employment in the country is truly based on individual qualifications, experience, motivation and not gender. In this system the individual who is best qualified for a job, male or female, would get the job.
However the fact of the matter is that true equality in this form remains an ideal in Canada and not a reality. It is time for women in the country to be given the respect, the pay and the opportunities they deserve. This means that as a government, members of all parties should work to review the problems associated with sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace and correct any wrongs that surface as they are discovered.
We must explore the problems associated with maternity leave and the difficulty that many women face in re-entering the workforce. It must be a balanced approach with the needs of the
employer also factored in. Currently the system that exists seems to recognize the problems and it seems to work.
Before I became a member of Parliament I ran businesses for 25 years. A lot of times this problem surfaced and by allowing the women to have maternity leave, have their baby and holding their job open to them for a period time of three to five months to make a decision as to whether they wanted to come back, this seemed to work. Out of six such pregnancies I had four female employees who decided to stay at home and two who came back. Perhaps a system like this has improved.
We must examine the discriminatory problems associated with child care and the rights of stay at home parents who are not entitled to the same rights as those who pay for child care outside the home. We must acknowledge the fact that there is a social stigma attached to stay at home mothers which implies that they are not on the same level as those who work outside the home. We must recognize the value of the contribution of those women who work at home and give them the opportunity to pursue any direction they choose.
Having a child should not be directly influenced by the government with various incentives through legislation. For instance, Calgarians Jim and Laurie Boland were recently told in Federal Court by a judge who had to make the decision that a parent who chooses to be at home with their child is not entitled to the same privileges as those who pay for child care.
The Income Tax Act admittedly denies the Bolands equal benefit under the law, but because stay at home parents are not a "a discrete and insular minority", as used by the judge they are not protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
This is legal discrimination and this must stop. If the motion today is intended to address problems like these, I would encourage the government to get on it right away and introduce legislation to make a judge's ruling unnecessary in situations like this one.
Parents should be free to choose the form of child care which best suits their situation as opposed to having government reward one choice over another.
In this International Year of the Family it is my intention before the year is over to introduce a private member's bill on the topic of equal financial assistance to all families regardless of the type of child care arrangements that they have made.
Let us build a country in which taxation and the options for employment are fair, a country in which opportunities flourish for individuals and employment is based on qualifications, experience and motivation, not gender.
If the motion suggests that affirmative action should be legislated in the workplace as a fixed percentage then the Reform Party opposes it. A lot of speakers earlier today pointed this out.
Women are not a special interest group. My caucus colleague from Beaver River mentioned this number of times. She said it twice and so I will follow her leadership and mention it twice as well. Women are not a special interest group. Affirmative action leads to reverse discrimination and not equality. Women are people just like men and should be respected as such.
It is time that extremes, the extreme males who are called male chauvinists and the extreme females who are called feminists, come together and eliminate that hardness and that extremism from both ends and come together and recognize each other as human beings. Respect and understanding are key.
In conclusion, I believe that women in the home, in the workplace and in general deserve more respect, not quotas. Perhaps a good beginning would be, especially in this year of the family, a definition of family in which we subscribe to some of those values in an ever changing world that existed in prior years when we had commitment and we had a sense of direction.
Perhaps a family could be defined as two people who are related by blood or through marriage or through adoption. This would cover a lot of the situations for single parents, for marriages and other situations in which the parents are deceased and siblings live together. These are the things I feel we should address this year.
As my final words, I do not think we should gloss over the problems that exist between men and women. I believe we should recognize them, face them head on and try to resolve them through respect and understanding, rather than through legislation and affirmative action.