Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise in the House to recognize today, March 8, as International Women's Day. This year the United Nations has adopted the theme, “Gender equality beyond 2005: Building a more secure future”.
In the 30 years since the UN first celebrated International Women's Day, we have made progress in a number of areas, but there is still work to be done. Women in this country deserve nothing less than complete equality.
The House must act to ensure women's issues that matter most in the lives of Canadian women are dealt with in a meaningful and lasting manner. This means combating domestic violence, finding solutions to end poverty, and ensuring that Canada develops a national not for profit public child care program. We need to make pay equity a reality and change systems that promote inequality for aboriginal, Inuit and Métis women, immigrant and visible minority women, and senior women.
Today I invite all Canadians to join with me in celebrating the accomplishments of the past three decades and to work together to find meaningful solutions so that gender equality beyond 2005 can be more than a theme, it can be our reality.