Mr. Speaker, I suddenly realized I only have five minutes so this will be a précis version of a number of the things I want to say.
First I want to congratulate the hon. member for Laurier—Saint-Marie for bringing forward this motion.
I also want to congratulate women everywhere in Canada, and especially the Fédération des femmes du Québec, who played a leadership role in holding the march of women in Canada and throughout the world and who are responsible for the truly extraordinary and impressive show given on Parliament Hill yesterday.
I have long believed that women will only have social and political equality when they have economic equality. I trust the House will indulge me as I talk a bit about some of the measures that have been taken to improve the economic status of women in our country.
I will refer to a number of measures in the budget for the year 2000-01. It is a budget that very much builds on steps begun in past budgets. It is a budget that has been made possible by the sacrifices of a lot of Canadians. Because women are among the lowest income Canadians, that means particularly by Canadian women.
However we see now that low and middle income earners in particular will benefit most from a number of measures in the last couple of budgets with reductions in their net personal income tax reaching an average of at least 18% annually. Again, the majority of those low and very moderate income earners are women and especially those with children.
We have also seen the reindexing of many tax measures which means that people at a lower income will now see their incomes rise without them becoming taxable or without increasing their tax burdens. It means that benefits such as the national child benefit and the GST credit for low income Canadians will also be indexed to inflation so that those benefits will not erode over time. For senior women it means that inflation will no longer compromise the real value of the age credit for old age security or the income level at with OAS begins to be reduced.
A number of measures with respect to business are of particular interest to women and their economic status as well. Women are now starting up four times as many small businesses, women under 30 compared with men under 30. They are increasingly involved in trade so a number of the tax measures and initiatives with respect to developing trade and with respect to reducing the tax burden of small businesses will therefore benefit a large number of women.
I truly see the irony in what I just said, which is that women will benefit from the measures announced in the budget because their income is lower than that of men in Canada.
I recognize very well that there is a great deal still to be done. The majority of those living in poverty in Canada are women. Ninety per cent of senior women on their own are living in poverty. That is a shameful statement to have to make about a country like ours.
The United Nations calls us the best country in the world in which to live, and we are, but women in this country only rank ninth in the world. I will not be satisfied, nor will the government, until we have taken more measures to improve the equality of women and to ensure they benefit to a greater extent from the opportunities that a growing and prospering economy which we have now offers them.
To those responsible for yesterday's march, I express my personal appreciation because it certainly lends support to public awareness of the need to improve the economic status of women and assist the efforts of all of us in the House who are working toward that end.