Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her question. There is no denying that women have moved a very long way. If it had not been for the efforts of the feminists, if we are to use that term here, there would not be the level of awareness of many of the issues I cited in my text. If they had not spoken out change would not have occurred.
We have entered a different era. In my text I was trying to move us beyond the status quo. It is a challenge to government in terms of what I said to find ways to look at equality on the basis of just that with no conditions attached.
We will have to come to terms with the economic reality that the government has very few dollars to spend and start to rely more on volunteer groups as she suggested and those avenues I mentioned in my text to pursue and continue the evolutionary change.
I talked about effective and non-government subsidized efforts. I talked about litigation. I talked about the simple exercise of expression through our right to vote, putting people in the House of Commons. Hopefully that means women and men who will continue to press for change and pursue the opportunities we can without having to rely heavily on governments to fund initiatives. The issue of the dismantling of status of women is an attempt to move us beyond that point.
The government's budget was a startling shift to a different spectrum on the continuum of left to right. The ideology of social liberalism seems to have changed. They too have embraced more of an economic pragmatic approach to how we deal with issues. I am trying to seek different ways of encouraging women as well as men to find alternatives rather than the status quo approach of going to government for money to undertake another policy review or to produce another report with little action.
I appreciate the member's questions and look forward to further discussion with her at some other time.