Mr. Speaker, I will read the motion again. It reads:
That, in the opinion of this House, the federal government should take all public policy and legislative steps necessary to encourage the adoption of a shorter work week and reduced work time in the public sector, federally regulated industries, and the private sector as a whole.
First, I would like to say that this is a very good initiative by my colleague from Winnipeg North Centre and that we support this motion. It is unfortunate that it is not votable. This would have been nice, but maybe some other time. In any case, we are given the opportunity to debate it, and I think that this debate is needed in the House.
That being said, if I understand my colleague's motion correctly, there is no number of hours, so it is negotiable and up for discussion. I think that the purpose of this motion is to allow for a discussion on reducing the hours of work.
Today in most households, both parents work; when one works 10 hours and the other works 12, if there are no regulations, it makes family life difficult, children are always in daycare, and the quality of family life is virtually non-existent. Latch-key kids come home from school to do their homework without help from the family. This creates problems and difficult situations. Divorce and family problems ensue.
Obviously, if we can improve the quality of life by reducing the number of hours worked, we can find solutions, maybe not to all of these problems, but to the vast majority of them.
Here in the House, initiatives such as this one always come from this side. It is as though we are the only ones who want to innovate in the Canadian parliament, and I will explain why.
Members know that I am committed to a number of issues, including modernizing certain situations. I am referring specifically to the withdrawal of pregnant or nursing women from a hazardous workplace, an issue that I have worked on for ten years now. This problem was solved a long time ago in Quebec, where pregnant and nursing women have a special program allowing them to withdraw from work. However, here in Ottawa, women are still not able to benefit from preventive withdrawal. This is completely unacceptable.
It has been exactly ten years since we raised this problem in the House. The leader of my party put forward a motion. I suggested major changes to part II of the Canada Labour Code, section 132, to this end. Here in the House, I introduced a private member's bill, which obviously was not approved by the government. The entire issue is a hot one.
There is parental leave. In Quebec, we are currently fighting for fair parental leave. The federal government is still blocking our way. Again recently, the Quebec minister opened the door to the federal government and said “Listen, we are willing to sit down and find a solution. We are willing to sit down with you. Do something. A solution must be found”. All to no avail.
As for pay equity, a tiny bit of progress has been made but, once again, the problem has not been resolved. Men and women, everyone should receive the same pay for work of equal value. We need only look at the current situation at Radio-Canada. Female journalists are not being paid the same as their male colleagues. It is unacceptable that this is still going on in 2002. These are very important issues.
As for employment equity, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour, who is here in the House, can speak to this. We have been hearing from witnesses in committee for two months. Much still remains to be done. The law is not being properly applied and it has been around since 1986, in other words, for more than 15 years. There are problems of application. The government has not even managed to get around to all the industries affected by the Employment Equity Act to check whether they are doing their job, whether they are applying the legislation as they should. After 15 years, the government has not even finished taking a look at all departments to ensure that those who should practise what they preach are applying the legislation as they should.
Many people filed complaints with the Canadian Human Rights Commission to say that the government was not doing its job. A complaint was filed about Radio-Canada not doing its job with respect to employment equity. When one is a crown corporation, one must practise what one preaches.
I trust that there will be very close follow-up. The law must be changed in this connection. A report is to be tabled within two or three weeks and I trust that it will at least address all the concerns of the visible minorities, the disabled, women and aboriginal people who are not well served by this law. This situation must therefore be improved.
Then there are the House of Commons staff, who are not protected. This makes no sense whatsoever. These people must be able to benefit from the same working conditions as the public servants working within departments. This is a huge flaw that must remedied and the solution is really a very simple one. If there is a true desire to get it done, it can be done in a very short time.
Then there is the anti-scab legislation, another very important bill. It has been discussed again and again.
There are the orphan clauses, which keep a young worker starting out in a company from benefiting from the same opportunities as a worker with more seniority. Being a newcomer, he or she cannot have the same opportunities for advancement as existing staff.
These are all bills that have often come up in the form of private members' motions or bills. Each time we in the House have had the opportunity to move the government ahead, to advance the situation of the population of Canada and of Quebec, it has not happened because the government is not able to get its act together.
The laws I have referred to, and the motion my colleague has just introduced, are not million dollar affairs. It is just a matter of changing attitudes. We are not asking this to be done in a day, but attitudes have to be changed.
There must be work done in the labour sector. I do not come from a union background in the least. I am a business woman from the private sector, but I agree with having policies that will allow women and men to have more normal family lives.
Today, people need to work almost twice as much to get what they had ten years ago. We need to be able to strike a balance, and we have yet to manage that.
So I agree with the fact that we need to have policies and work with the unions, because they are there, they exist, they protect rights and they must continue to exist in the future. We must work with employers, because we want businesses to be profitable and that is possible; we are capable of sitting down to negotiate and discuss. And finally, we must work with our governments, who have a whole lot of work cut out for them, which they are not getting to right now.
We need to raise everyone's awareness. It is possible to respect jurisdiction, because earlier my colleague spoke of jurisdiction. We can easily apply this motion to businesses under federal jurisdiction, as is done when a law is applied in Quebec for provincial jurisdictions. There is nothing preventing this.
There needs to be a major debate in the House on all of the legislation regarding the protection of employees and employment insurance. When it comes to EI, the doors must be opened, we need to discuss withdrawal from a hazardous workplace and parental leave. We need to talk about real measures. Finally, we need to stop accumulating $30 billion surpluses on the backs of the unemployed and invest this money to improve the quality of life for all employees in Canada.