Mr. Speaker, earlier this month Canada's National Women's Soccer Team qualified as one of 16 countries for next year's Women's World Cup in China.
Like the young ladies who proudly play for Canada's National Hockey Team, they are competing for the love of their sport and the pride of representing Canada, not for million dollar contracts. While women's sports are finally starting to get the attention they deserve, we still have a long way to go before we reach parity with men's teams.
After both our men's and women's hockey teams won gold medals at the Winter Olympics, the Vancouver Province newspaper printed a two page, colour photograph of the victorious men's team. Thinking I had missed the same photo of the women's team, I called the paper to purchase the women's team photo. A male editor of the paper informed me that the paper did not run a similar size photo of the women's team because Canadians did not have the same interest in women's sports.
I would like to ensure all athletes who represent Canada that Canadians are equally proud of them regardless of their gender.