Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my hon. colleague, who probably knows, whether there is a different treatment for pregnant women in a situation of precautionary withdrawal of work.
The Bloc Quebecois had proposed an amendment at the time of the last Labour Code revision in 1992 to authorize the federal government to make administrative agreements with any province that had a system providing better conditions than those provided for for women in the Canada Labour Code, in cases of precautionary withdrawal of work.
The Liberal Party, then in the opposition, had supported the amendment put forward by the Bloc. Now, we are about to revise the Labour Code. There is a paper from the Department of Labour circulating, but there is no provision in that paper for administrative agreements between the federal government and any province. That is what the amendment was all about; we were not referring to Quebec but to any province whatsoever, and those administrative agreements were along the lines of flexible federalism, I would imagine.
I would like to know if the hon. member will undertake to ask her government to include in the legislation provisions dealing with precautionary withdrawal of pregnant women in order to enable the federal government to make administrative agreements with any province that has better conditions than those provided for in the Canada Labour Code, since at least in the case of Quebec they are not as good as those provided for in the
Quebec Labour Code. Is she agreeable to such a request and will she approach her government's labour minister about that?