Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to the motion on women's economic autonomy that is currently before the House. I am pleased that my hon. colleague attaches such a high importance to the enhancement of women's economic autonomy, because there is still a great deal that we still must do. She is extremely right.
Let us remember where women have come from. Women only got the vote federally in 1918. In Quebec, women only got the vote in 1940. Aboriginal women have had the vote only since 1969. Women were only considered persons in 1929. We have a long way to go.
Some of the things that need to be done to ensure women taking their full place in society, economically, socially, politically and culturally are going to mean embarking on some very long term measures that will take time. Women have only just, in the later and middle part of this century, actually come into their own.
Women's economic security and independence affect every single aspect of women's lives. Why? Because women are made up of all the things that contribute to their lives. If we talk about women's economic autonomy, we have to talk about the impact that women's poverty and women's dependence have on violence against women.
We have to talk about the fact that 80 per cent of single parent families are headed by women. We need to talk about the diversity of women. We need to talk about the fact that many women face triple barriers, not just the barrier of their gender. Therefore, we cannot present a simplistic solution to women's economic autonomy. They must, necessarily, be comprehensive as they must cross every single segment of women's lives.
As Secretary of State for the Status of Women, I am very proud of what our government has done to promote women's economic independence and equality between the sexes in general in Canada. Although there is still a lot to do, we are determined to advance the cause of the equality of women.
Therefore, the government has taken an approach to women's equality that is multi-faceted and comprehensive. Its accomplishments are many and varied. In a little over three years it has moved forward on a wide range of issues of importance to women.
While the federal government moves to strengthen employment equity, certain provinces are moving to cancel employment equity measures. It has moved to deficit reduction because a stable Canadian economy gives the ability to assist and to move forward with good social strategies to assist women.
Firearms control, child support reform, Canada child tax benefit and job creation and growth are all things that must and will impact on women's economic autonomy. The government has moved on education and training, prenatal nutrition and women's health issues, because health is an economic resource. It has moved on youth employment because the young girl child will become the woman of tomorrow. Reproductive technologies, outlawing female genital mutilation, action on child poverty and more are all measures which the government has moved on.
All of these may seem unrelated but they have an impact on women's economic autonomy. The foundation of women's equality must be built on a composite of positive actions which touch on all aspects of their lives. One issue interacts with another. The actions of one government department impacts on another. Policies must be shaped, which is what the government is doing with a careful eye to their full implications for all Canadians, no matter whether they are women or men, young or old, rich or poor, recent immigrants or long time Canadians.
As Secretary of State for the Status of Women, I have focused my work therefore on three key priority areas: economic independence and autonomy for women, eliminating violence against women, and women's rights as human rights, with particular emphasis on the role of the disadvantaged.
We have moved first and foremost to secure the future of Canada's social programs, many of which are vital to the economic well-being of women. We know that women's incomes do not only depend on paid work, they depend on transfers from governments and transfers from individuals such as alimony and child support. They depend on the amount of unpaid work that women do. And they also depend on whether women have children or not.
There are fewer and fewer jobs for women which speaks to a discrimination that is rampant against women. That is why we have moved forward to deal with these issues with a short term and a very long term holistic strategy. The 73 cents that many women in full time jobs earn to the $1 that every man earns has to do with the fact that many women have children and that impacts on their ability to secure full time work.
What has the government done? In this budget it has strengthened literacy programs because women need to be assisted to become literate. In this budget access to training and work has been improved. Slowly an infrastructure has been built over the past three years.
Look at the EI system. Everyone has heard talk about the EI system. What has not been said is that over 270,000 women will have work insured for the very first time in their lives. The reinvestment of $800 million in employment benefits will help women to find jobs. Sixty-seven per cent of the people who receive family income are women. The average benefit for the single parent, given that 80 per cent of them are women, will be increased by 13 per cent.
Seven hundred thousand women, including 495,000 who pay premiums today are going to have their premiums refunded under the EI benefit. We do not hear about these things. We also do not hear about the fact that under the new EI benefit women will now have choices, especially when we consider that women with children have problems in the workforce. With the new EI benefit, women will be allowed to make a choice to stay at home and look after their children for up to five years and still have access under the employment insurance to go back to training.
Labour market support. Look at the Employment Equity Act which has targeted women as a very high group in terms at looking at employment equity for women.
The Canada student loans program, which gives grants to part time students, such as single women, will fund increased day care and tax credits to women in high school now. These things are all new. They may seem to be small things but when they are stacked one on top of the other, they become a holistic, long term, bit by bit infrastructure which can be built on to help women achieve economic autonomy.
Among our accomplishments, we might mention consolidation of the Employment Equity Act and a series of measures aimed at improving access to post-secondary education.
We have now improved the ability of women to go into post graduate programs, specifically in science and mathematics, because these are where the new sustainable long term jobs will come from in the next century.
These are some of the things we talk about. They are not grandiose gestures because centuries upon centuries of women's inequality cannot be fixed with one single move. It must be built with a strong, solid infrastructure.
This is why we have looked at the issue of unpaid work. For the first time in the history of the country there have been questions about unpaid work in the census forms. They will define exactly how much unpaid work women do in terms of nurturing and care giving. They will look at how that is factored into national accounts so we can realize that unpaid work supports the economic structures of the country.
We need to look at the child support programs. Many women who head single parent families do not have the ability to support their children properly. These children live in poverty. That is why scheduled to come into effect on May 1, 1997 will be the new child support payments act to ensure that women do not have to fight tooth and nail for every penny they receive to support their children. These children will finally get the support they need to help them get an education and to have the quality of life they need to become strong and secure adults.
There is practically no dispute that the federal government has put its fiscal house in order. That meant spending restraints. We could not exempt transfers from the spending restraints because transfers make up 20 per cent of all federal funding.
We have been a lot tougher on ourselves than we have been on the provinces. Between 1993-94 and 1998-99 Quebec's transfer entitlements will decrease by 10.9 per cent. During that same period the federal government transfers will be reduced by 15 per cent. The government of Quebec knows very well that the reduction of budgetary deficits imposes difficult choices. The Quebec government also knows it must bear its share of the effort.
Premier Bouchard made very clear that restraints involve tough choices when he said in the National Assembly on March 25, 1996: "To those who say not in my backyard I reply that there must be something in everyone's backyard".
Then there was Bernard Landry who told the National Assembly on December 9, 1996 that it must nevertheless be admitted there is a sense of responsibility that binds us to do our share to help get Canada out of a debt we helped create.
In the current fiscal year federal transfers to provinces for health, post secondary education and other social programs will be $26.9 billion. In addition, provinces like Quebec receive well over $8.5 billion in equalization payments. Quebec is getting federal transfers of approximately $11 billion a year or 31 per cent of all transfers. Where that province chooses to spend its money will depend on the goodwill of the province and its commitment to women. If it chooses to spend the money on women then it will. It is the provinces' choice as to what they cut and not ours.
For the provinces to be able to build some long term goals into their programs for the future of women and children, we have stabilized the transfers to a five-year program that in the last two years will see an increase. There will also be an $11 billion cash flow so the federal government can continue to keep a set of national standards to ensure that women have the social programs and the health care they need.
We talk about women's economic well-being and the health of women. We have set up five centres of excellence for women's health across the country to deal specifically with helping to form good policies to assist women to be healthy so they can contribute to the economic growth of the country.
This is what we mean when we talk about economic autonomy. We do not limit it to whether or not a women has a dollar in her pocket. Some of the things we have done in the last budget will assist about 1.4 million families to get more money in their pockets, and 2.5 million of them have children.
Women are the heads of households, the majority of whose children live in poverty. When we attach money to children who live in poverty we assist the well-being of women and their families. They are interdependent.
It is important when we are talk about women's equality, Women's International Day and Women's International Week, to remember those who say we do not need to have programs, that we do not need to look at women as disadvantaged group, or that many women like aboriginal women, lesbians, disabled women and women of colour continue to be triply and doubly disadvantaged. If we do not understand that then there are those of us in the House who are out of touch with the real lives of women, who do not understand that women are the poor, that women are among the most illiterate and that women are the ones who need access to good training programs.
As a Liberal government we realize it. We have specifically targeted women so that they have access to training and that because they have children they are able to find work within their homes, to be able to set up their own businesses. Since we have come into power women's enterprise centres have been targeting women, assisting them to get money to start their own businesses and assisting with work plans so their businesses can be successful. Over 46 per cent of new businesses are headed by women and they are the most successful businesses that have given women the choice to have economic independence.
When we speak about women's economic independence and about violence against women, we speak to women and their human rights. One of my colleague's across the way talked about women in politics. Women make up over 50 per cent of the population. If we do not understand that getting women into political structures where they can play a part in decision making is simple democracy then we do not understand democracy. If we do not have appropriate representation from over 50 per cent of our population in decision making we do not factor in the reality of how the country is structured or the reality of the gender differences that make up the country.
The Minister of Finance said that helping women to achieve their full potential was simply a matter of good common sense. If women make up over 50 per cent of the population they must have a key role to play in forming the important human resource development that is necessary. The Minister of Finance also said resources for the country in the 21st century would not lie in the ground on which we walk but would lie in the people who walk on it. Those people make up 50 per cent of our population. They are women. They are still disadvantaged. They are still not equal.
The government has dedicated itself to ensuring that a strong infrastructure for the long term development and enhancement of women's economic equality is starting. We started it. We will continue to build it. It will be strong. In the 21st century we can be assured that, with many of the initiatives we have taken, women will be well on their way to fulfilling their place in Canada.