Please, madam secretary of state.
In a sovereign Quebec, free of Ottawa's centralizing goals, women will clearly benefit from a policy of full employment coupled with a social policy that reflects the effect of their participation in the working world. I am talking here of policy on child care, working conditions in keeping with family responsibilities and employment equity. Where are the daycare places so long promised by the federal government? They were promised, and we are still waiting. Yet we are paying the federal government to have these places created.
Quebec women will have the advantage of a unique system of manpower planning and training. They will have the benefit of a system that is decentralized in favour of the regions, the prime sources of human and business activity.
Finally, Quebec women will move far beyond the endless battles and constitutional red tape and will focus their energies on improving the quality of their life, that of their children, their husband and their fellow Quebecers. This was the request of the participants in the women's march on poverty, last June's bread and roses march, which was undertaken on behalf of all Quebec women. This is what the Government of Quebec is proposing and is committed to promoting.
In conclusion, Quebec women will quicken their step toward equality by dropping a level of government, which is preparing to sacrifice them on the altar of economics and which is preparing to impose cuts on their old age pension and unemployment insurance cheques, by tying these benefits to the family salary in the new reform of social programs. They will drop a level of government that is useless, costly and more concerned about the interests of major corporations than about the grocery bill of single parent families.
I am appealing here to Quebec women's common sense and administrative talents to get them to realize that savings are possible by eliminating overlap and duplication.
It is by taking control of their own destiny, by becoming self-sufficient that Quebecers, like Quebec, will grow from now on, in friendship with their Canadian sisters and without forgetting the progress that has already been made. There is, however, much more to be done in this area, and I think that the federal government should first deal with women's economic equality.
Women in the public service still earn only 70 per cent of what men make. Something must be done, and I urge the government to move from rhetoric to action.
It is said that women's economic independence is important and could reduce violence against them. I call on the government to take measures to ensure that women are paid as much as men for doing the same work. I urge the government to think about the action plan for gender equality.
The study the minister referred to earlier, the federal plan, puts women at the heart of government decision making. This plan requires that every policy, program and law be developed with the impacts on women, as well as men, in mind.
I exhort the government to be very vigilant regarding the reforms contemplated by the Minister of Human Resources Development, for example, cutting UI and old age pension benefits and setting women's benefits on the basis of family income. We know full well that benefits are often based on men's higher wages, and we fought against this.
What does this mean for a woman who receives her first old age pension cheque at 65 and whose husband earns a certain salary? It is often the first cheque these women have ever received. This cheque also represents economic independence, a little bit of economic independence for women.