Mr. Speaker, on this day, March 8, International Women's Day, a day to commemorate the many battles for equal rights of men and women, I would like to raise the issue of salary inequity at the CBC, a crown corporation that should set an example when it comes to equal employment rights.
The CBC has chosen an underhanded way of favouring its male employees, by paying them, in the form of a bonus, the sum of $3.9 million, divided among 31 people, 22 of them men and only 9 women.
In order to correct this flagrant injustice, both vice-presidents of the French network have promised to put an end to this inequality by February 28, 2007. This is only a moral commitment.
The union believes that the initiative would have been more credible if CBC management had allowed something to be written into the collective agreement. I invite the new Minister of Canadian Heritage to put pressure on the CBC to ensure that the union's demands become reality.